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WINSLOW  HOMER 


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BY  KEN  YON  COX 


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BHEBWAH 

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I.1BBARY 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2013 


http://archive.org/details/winslowhomeOOcoxk 


1  JD  HHT 

TaA  lO  M^:^  riJoqOHTEM  HHT 

.9biw  estbot  ^Qi-  .riairf  sariont  t,v  ^     .CQ8I  .-nmoH  ;t»iftb  bne  b9naiS 


THE  GULF  STREAM 

THE  METROPOLITAN  MUSEUM  OF  ART 

Signed  and  dated;  Homer,  1899.     Canvas,  28%  inches  high,  49%  inches  wide. 


^VINSLOW  HOMER 


BY 

Kenyon  Cox 


New  York 
PRIVATELY  PRINTED 

MCMXIV 


Copyrigkt,  1914 

by 

Frederic  Fairchild  Sherman 


TriL 


TO  Its  FIRST  READER 

Philip  Littell 

WHOSE  criticism  AND  ADVICE  ON  MATTERS  OF  STYLE 

WERE  INVALUABLE  TO  ME 

THIS  BOOK  IS  AFFECTIONATELY  INSCRIBED. 


PREFACE 

For  the  facts  and  dates  of  Homer's  Kfe  I  am  indebt- 
ed  to  ''The  Life  and  Works  of  Winslow  Homer''  by 
William  Ho^ve  Downes,  Houghton  Mifflin  Com^! 
pany,  igii.  From  this  book,  which  I  have  accepted 
as  the  only  authority  on  the  subjedl,  I  have  also  bor^ 
rov/ed  a  fev^  quotations  from  John  W^.  Beatty's  ''In? 
trodudlory  Note"  and  from  Homer's  own  letters. 

For  the  interpretation  I  have  put  upon  the  fad:s, 
and  for  the  attempt  at  a  critical  estimate  of  Homer's 
art,  I  alone  am  responsible.  Upon  the  vaHdity  of  this 
estimate  my  Kttle  book  must  depend  for  its  excuse  for 
being. 

But  while  the  opinions  expressed  are  my  own 
they  must  often  coincide  ^vith  those  expressed  by 
other  ^v^ite^s.  If  they  did  not  the  book  might  be  orig? 
inal  but  v/ould  almost  certainly  be  erroneous .  I  think 
I  have  said  nothing  because  others  have  said  it,  but  I 
have  not  had  the  vanity  to  refrain  from  saying  any? 
thing  because  it  had  been  already  said,  or  to  attempt 
novelty  at  the  possible  cost  of  truth. 

Kenyon  Cox. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


The  Gulf  Stream Frontispiece 

New  England  Country  School      .      .      .       Page 

The  Berry  Pickers 

A  Voice  from  the  CKfF 

The  We^  Wind 

The  Herring  Net 

Hound  and  Hunter 

High  Cliff,  Coa^  of  Maine       .... 

A  Summer  Night 

The  Fox  Hunt 

The  Lookout 

Early  Morning  After  Storm  at  Sea     . 


24 
24 

32 
32 
34 
38 
38 
42 

46 

50 
54 


WINSLOV/  HOMER 


WINSLOV/  HOMER 

PART  ONE 

I^^^^^^^^S  HE  painters  o£  America  v^Ko  have 
^^^^^^^5i^  gained  a  certain  definiteness  and  per- 
(S^^l^jS^^^^  manence  of  reputation — those  whose 
^^^^^^^^^  names  are  as  well  known  to  dealers 
^^y^^^j^^^  and  collectors  as  are  the  names  of 
R?^4M^S^^^^^^^y  leading  foreign  makers  and  \vhose 
pictures  have  an  e^abHshed  and  increasing  commers^ 
cial  value — belong,  almo^  ^thout  exception,  to  the 
generation  which  reached  its  majority  shortly  before 
the  Civil  War.  The  century  and  a  half  of  painting  in 
America  may  be  roughly  divided  into  three  periods 
of  approximately  equal  length.  The  fir^  of  our  paint;: 
ers  to  attain  any  considerable  eminence  v/ere  purely 
Enghsh  in  origin  and  in  training,  and  the  earlier  of 
them  ^ve^e,  on  the  v^hole,  the  be^;  so  that  the  first 
period  may  be  called  that  of  the  decKne  of  the  EngHsh 
school  in  America.  The  second  period  v/as  that  of  the 
slovv^  evolution  of  a  native  school,  and  this  school  v/as 
on  the  verge  of  its  highest  achievement  when  the  third 
or  present  period  began;  the  period  of  a  new  foreign 
influence— mainly  French — and  of  the  effort  to  adapt 
a  technic  learned  in  the  schools  of  continental  Europe 
to  the  expression  of  American  thought  and  American 
feehng.    We  cannot  yet  tell  how  many  of  our  paint^^ 

II 


ers  belonging  wholly  to  this  la^  period  may  achieve 
a  lading  fame.  Those  Avho  seem  already  to  have 
achieved  it  are  of  the  time  o{  transition,  and  their 
work  marks  the  culmination  of  the  native  school  and 
the  beginning  of  the  nev^  influence  from  abroad. 

Their  birth  dates  fall  very  near  together.  The  old? 
eiA  of  them.  Fuller  and  Hunt,  v^ere  born  in  1822  and 
1824  respectively,  and  Inness  came  in  1825.  Then, 
after  a  gap  of  nine  years,  we  have  V/hi^ler  in  1834, 
LaFarge  in  1835  and,  in  the  one  year  1836,  Homer 
Martin,  Wy  ant,  Vedder,  and  the  subjedt  of  this  book, 
^/^inslov;^  Homer.  The  mere  li^  of  names  is  enough 
to  show  the  double  nature  of  the  w^ork  accomplished 
by  the  men  of  this  generation.  At  the  outset  ^ve  have 
the  sharp  contra^  between  Hunt,  the  pupil  of  Cou? 
ture  and  the  friend  o£  Millet,  a  teacher  and  a  great 
influence  if  a  somewhat  ineffectual  arti^,  making 
himself,  from  1855  to  his  death  in  1879,  ^^^  apo^le  o{ 
that  Barbizon  school  w^hich  was  to  affedl,  in  greater 
or  less  degree,  so  many  others  of  the  group;  and  Fuller, 
working  by  himself  on  his  Deerfield  farm,  and  emerge 
ing  from  obscurity  in  1876  as  the  arti^ic  contempo? 
rary  of  Hunt's  pupils  and  of  the  young  men  whom 
Hunt's  preaching  had  sent  to  Paris  for  their  education. 
And  the  same  contra^  is  repeated,  in  even  sharper 
form,  between  V/hi^ler  and  Homer;  betv^een  the 
brilhant  cosmopolitan  who  spent  but  a  fev/  years  of 
his  infancy  and  a  few  more  of  his  youth  in  his  own 
country,  and  the  recluse  of  Prout's  Neck;  between 
the  dainty  symphonic,  whose  art  is  American  only 


12 


because  it  is  not  quite  English  and  not  quite  French, 
and  the  ^urdy  reali^  who  has  given  us  the  mo^ 
purely  native  v^ork,  as  it  is  perhaps  the  mo^  po\ver? 
ful,  yet  produced  in  America. 

Winslovv^  Homer  came  of  pure  Nev^  England 
^ock,  being  directly  descended  from  one  Captain 
John  Homer  w^ho  sailed  from  England  in  his  own 
ship  and  settled  in  Bo^on  in  the  middle  of  the  seven? 
teenth  century.  His  father,  Charles  Savage  Homer, 
was  a  hardv^are  merchant  in  Bo^on,  v^here  Wins- 
low  ^vas  born  on  February  24th,  1836,  and  his  moth- 
er,  Henrietta  Maria  Benson,  came  from  Bucksport, 
Maine,  a  town  named  after  her  maternal  grandfather. 
She  is  said  to  have  had  "•'a  pretty  talent  for  painting 
flov/ers  in  v/atercolors,''  and  her  son  may  have  in? 
herited  his  arti^ic  proclivities  from  her.  There  were 
probably  other  seafaring  men  than  the  fir^  Captain 
John  among  the  Homer  ance^ry,  and  the  arti^'s 
uncle,  James  Homer  owned  a  barque  and  cruised  to 
the  V/e^  Indies.  We  cannot  doubt  that  the  love  of 
salt  water  was  even  more  deeply  ingrained  in  W^in? 
slow  Homer  than  the  love  of  art,  though  it  was  not  to 
show  itself  until  rather  late  in  life. 

In  1842,  when  Homer  ^vas  six  years  old,  the  family 
removed  to  Cambridge,  and  there  his  boyhood  v^as 
spent.  There  v/as  ^ill  much  of  the  country  village 
about  Cambridge,  and  Homer  and  his  two  brothers 
lived  the  healthy  life  of  rural  New  England,  fishing, 
boating,  swimming,  playing  rough  games  and  going 
to  school.    An  intere^ing  memorial  o{  this  time  is 


Homer's  earlier  exiiAing  drawing,  reproduced  in 
V/illiam  Howe  Downes's  ''Life  and  Works"  of  tKe 
arti^,  under  the  title  o{  The  Beetle  and  the  Wedge. 
It  represents  V/inslow's  elder  brother  Charles  and 
his  cousin  George  Benson  holding  the  younger  broth? 
er,  Arthur,  spread  eagle  fashion  by  the  arms  and  legs 
and  about  to  swing  his  weight  violently  again^  the 
rear  of  another  innocent  young^er  squatting  on  all 
fours  in  the  grass. 

In  the  lives  of  arti^s  one  expedts,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  tales  of  precocious  talent,  but  it  is  seldom  that 
such  evidence  of  their  veracity  can  be  brought  for? 
v/ard.  Here  is  a  boy  of  eleven  dra^ving  from  life,  or 
from  memory  of  personal  observation,  a  composition 
of  four  figures  in  compHcated  foreshortenings;  indi? 
eating  their  several  adlions  and  expressions  vv^ith  ad? 
mirable  truth  and  economy;  and,  ^vith  a  fe^v  lines 
and  scratches  of  shade,  placing  them  in  their  setting 
of  sunht  pa^ure  and  di^ant  hillside.  Of  course  the 
drawing  is  but  a  sketch  and,  equally  of  course,  the 
ability  to  make  such  a  sketch  does  not  imply  that  of 
carrying  it  farther.  It  was  long  before  Homer  could 
put  into  the  form  of  a  definite  and  completed  -work  o£ 
art  what  is  here  sugge^ed,  but  as  a  sketch,  as  a  rapid 
notation  of  the  essentials  of  something  seen,  it  is  such 
as  Homer,  or  any  other  arti^,  might,  at  any  period 
of  his  career,  have  been  ^villing  to  sign.  The  essential 
W^inslo^v  Homer,  the  ma^er  o£  ^veight  and  move? 
ment,  is  already  here  in  impHcation.  If  many  of  the 
'''heap''  of  youthful  dra^vings  which  the  arti^  pre? 


served  for  thirty  years  or  more  were  of  anything  Kke 
this  quahty  it  is  no  wonder  that  his  father  encouraged 
his  aspirations,  bought  him  JuKan  Kthographs  to  ^udy 
and,  at  nineteen,  apprenticed  him  to  one  BufFord,  a 
hthographer  of  Bo^on. 

This  was  in  1855,  and  Homer  thus  became  a  prac? 
tising  artist  without  ever  having  been  an  art  ^udent. 
He  seems  to  have  been  employed,  at  once,  upon  the 
better  class  of  ^vo^k  turned  out  by  the  e^ablishment, 
and  to  have  designed  as  w^ell  as  executed  illustrated  ' 
title-pages  for  sheet  music  and  the  like.  During  his 
apprenticeship  he  managed  to  pick  up  from  a  French 
wood  engraver  named  Damereau  some  hints  as  to 
methods  of  drawing  on  the  block,  and  when  his  tw^o 
years  were  up — on  his  twentyfir^  birthday — he  took 
a  ^udio  of  his  own  and  set  up  as  an:  independent  illus^ 
trator.  He  v/orked  at  fir^  for  ''Bailouts  Pidtoriar' 
and  later  for  ''Harper's  Weekly,"  and  his  connection 
with  the  latter  periodical  endured  until  1875,  '^^^il^  ^^ 
continued  to  do  occasional  book  illu^ration  for  sever? 
al  years  longer. 

There  are  many  worse  preparations  for  the  career 
of  a  painter  than  the  ^vo^k  of  a  hack  illu^rator.  The 
illu^rator  mu^  be  ready  to  dra^v  anything  and,  if  he 
takes  his  v/ork  seriously  and  does  his  tasks  as  v/ell  as 
he  can,  he  is  learning  something  every  day.  And  he 
mu^  concentrate  his  mind  on  his  result,  learn  to  tell 
his  i^ory  and  to  make  his  intention  clear.  No  one  is 
so  httle  tempted  to  the  modern  fallacy  that  the  only 
business  of  a  painter  is  to  learn  to  paint,  that  the  subjedt 

15 


is  of  no  importance,  and  that,  if  only  one  is  a  trained 
speaker,  it  matters  little  ^vhetKer  or  not  one  has  any? 
thing  to  say.  The  illu^rator  mu^  al^vays  say  some? 
thing,  ^vhether  he  says  it  v^ell  or  ill.  He  mu^  make 
his  pidture,  always,  and  a  fi?esh  pidture  each  time,  and 
his  success  will  depend  on  the  intere^  of  the  public  in 
\vhat  he  does,,  not  on  the  approval  by  his  fellows  of 
the  way  in  w^hich  he  does  it.  Homer's  ^vo^k  in  black 
and  ^vhite  was,  for  the  moirt  part,  independent  of  any 
^vritten  text  and  he  seems,  generally,  to  have  chosen 
his  subjedls  for  himself.  They  are  very  varied  and, 
in  the  course  of  his  ^vo^k  as  an  illu^rator,  he  experi? 
mented  with  almoirt  every  kind  of  subjedl  he  after? 
wards  made  his  ov/n  as  ^vell  as  with  many  that  he 
never  rendered  in  color.  He  did  not  attempt  the  ideal 
or  the  romantic,  but  anything  that  he  could  see  he 
^vas  ready  to  drav/,  deaHng  impartially  with  town 
and  v^ith  country,  and  trying  his  hand  at  ^vell  dressed 
ladies  and  gentlemen  as  at  barefoot  boys  and  sunbon? 
neted  girls.  His  first  Adirondack  lAudies,  his  fir^ 
sea?shore  pieces,  his  fir^  deep?sea  scenes,  appeared  in 
black  and  white. 

Of  the  merit  of  Homer's  drav/ings  for  illu^ration 
it  is  difficult  to  judge.  American  v/ood  engraving 
V7as  not,  in  those  days,  the  fine  art  that  it  afterv^ards 
became,  and. the  blocks  on  ^vhich  he  v/orked  \vere 
cut  v/ith  a  mechanical  and  somev^hat  dismal  monot? 
ony.  It  is  only  in  the  in^ances  v^here  a  prelimin? 
ary  \vater  color  sketch  exi^s  that  we  can  judge  how 
much  of  beauty  and  of  character  was  sacrificed  in  re? 

i6 


produdtion.  If  Kis  original  draw^ings  dired;  upon  tke 
vv^ood  have  lo^  as  much  in  the  cutting  they  mu^  have 
been  far  better  than  we  shall  ever  knovs/.  But  v/hat? 
ever  their  arti^ic  value,  or  lack  of  it,  they  were  of 
incalculable  importance  as  a  training  of  the  observer 
and  the  recorder  of  observations  that  Homer  was. 

In  1859  Homer  came  to  New  York,  and  this  city 
remained  his  home,  when  he  was  at  home,  for  tsventy- 
five  years.  Here  he  attended  for  a  time  the  night  class 
of  the  National  Academy  of  Design,  and  had  lessons, 
once  a  v^eek,  on  Saturdays,  for  a  month,  from  a  French 
arti^  named  Rondel.  They  v^ere  the  ordy  painting 
lessons  he  ever  had,  and  in  the  catalogue  of  the  Paris 
Exposition  of  igoo  he  duly  appears  as  '"eleve  de  Fred- 
erick RondeV'  \  for  in  French  catalogues  one  mu^  be  a 
pupil  of  some  one.  He  appears  for  the  fir^  time  as  an 
exhibitor  at  the  Academy  exhibition  of  i860,  w^ith  a 
drawling  of  Skating  in  Central  Park;  probably  a  ^udy 
for,  or  a  repKca  of,  one  of  his  illu^rations  for  ''Harp- 
er's  Weekly.'' 

In  1 86 1  Homer  seems  to  have  gone  to  Washing? 
ton  to  make  drav^ings  of  Lincoln's  inauguration,  and 
in  the  next  year  he  vv^as  certainly  special  arti^  for 
''Harper's  Weekly"  with  McClellan's  army  in  the 
Peninsula.  He  was  probably  not  more  than  three 
months  at  the  front,  but  his  experience  during  that 
time  mu^  have  supplied  him  w4th  many  more  sketch? 
es  and  ^udies  than  are  represented  in  the  d^a^vings  he 
sent  home,  and  from  these  ^udies  he  took  the  subjects 
of  his  fir^  pictures.    In  November  of  1862,  ''Harper's 


Weekly''  published  his  Sharpshooter  on  Picket  Duty 
as  ''from  a  painting  by  W.  Homer,  Esq./'  and  this, 
the  firi^  of  his  ^vo^ks  in  oil,  ^vas  followed  by  Rations, 
Home,  S^veet  Home,  and  The  La^  Goose  at  York? 
to^vn.  The  two  latter  were  exhibited  in  the  Nation^; 
al  Academy  exhibition  of  1863,  and  in  1864  Homer 
sent  to  the  Academy  In  Front  of  the  Guard  House 
and  The  Briarv^ood  Pipe  and  was  promptly  eledted 
an  Associate.  The  next  year  he  exhibited  The  Bright 
Side  and  two  other  pidtures  and  v/as  made  a  full  Aca^^ 
demician,  though  this  eledtion  is  generally  attributed 
to  the  reputation  o£  Prisoners  from  the  Front,  then 
under  way  but  not  ready  for  exhibition.  It  appeared 
at  the  Academy  in  1866,  ^vhen  the  arti^  was  thirty 
years  old,  and  is  one  of  a  series  of  important  pidtures 
that  mark  off  the  decades  of  his  life  in  a  curious  man? 
ner.  This  one  may  be  said  to  announce  the  definite 
conclusion  of  his  'prentice  years.  They  had  been  very 
short,  and  he  \vas  an  Academician  before  any  of  his 
group  except  Vedder,  who  ^vas  eledted  in  the  same 
year,  the  author  of  an  almo^  sensationally  success:^ 
fill  pidture,  and  an  artiA  whose  ^vork  sold  readily 
at  such  prices  as  were  then  current,  all  vs^ithin  four 
years  from  the  beginning  of  his  fir^  painting. 

There  is  something  of  a  my^ery  about  the  present 
ownership  of  Prisoners  from  the  Front  and  it  does  not 
appear  to  have  been  shown  in  public  since  the  sale  of 
the  John  Taylor  Johnson  coUedtion  in  1876.  It  made 
a  deep  impression,  at  the  time,  not  less  upon  the  arti^s 
than  upon  the  critics  and  the  public.     In  1876  Prof. 


John  F.  Weir  called  it  ''a  unique  \vork  in  American 
art''  and  thought  it  better  than  anything  Homer  had 
done  in  the  intervening  years ;  and  LaFarge,  ju^  be^ 
fore  his  death,  wrote  of  it  as  ''a  marvelous  painting, 
marvelous  in  every  way,  but  especially  in  the  grasp 
of  the  moment."  V/as  it  not,  above  all,  to  this  ''grasp 
of  the  moment"  that  it  owed  its  success?  In  technical 
merit  it  can  hardly  be  greatly  superior  to  The  Bright 
Side,  w^hich  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  it  must  be  ^ill 
decidedly  primitive.  This  latter  picture  represents  a 
group  of  negro  team^ers  basking  in  the  sun  outside 
their  tent.  A  certain  piquancy  is  given  to  the  com? 
position  by  the  placing  of  the  head  looking  out  from 
the  tent^flaps  above  the  loungers,  but  that  is  the  only 
touch  of  purely  arti^ic  intere^.  The  drawing  is  suffi? 
cient,  no  more;  the  color  brov/n  and  heavy;  the  hand? 
ling  entirely  v/ithout  charm.  The  pid:ure  is  intere^? 
ing  from  its  evident  truth  of  observation  in  character 
and  attitude — that  is,  for  its  purely  illu^rative  quaU? 
ty — but  as  painting  it  hardly  exi^s.  Given  this  same 
illu^rative  value,  and  a  subjedl  so  intere^ing  to  the 
public  of  1866  as  that  of  the  Prisoners  from  the  Front, 
and  \ve  may  account  for  the  success  of  that  picture 
v/ithout  imagining  it  to  have  been  much  better  paint? 
ed  than  the  other  v/orks  of  this  time.  They  are  works 
from  v/hich  Homer's  future  could  scarce  have  been 
predicted,  and  they  w^ould  be  already  forgotten  had 
not  that  future  brought  forth  things  of  very  different 
and  va^ly  greater  quality. 

19 


PART  rwo 


IN  spite  of  his  precocious  boyhood  and  his  rapid 
success  as  a  young  man.  Homer's  talent  as  an  artiirt 
ripened  slowly.  An  Academician  before  he  was  thir? 
ty,  he  was  forty  when  he  produced  the  fir^  of  his  pic^s 
tures  which  has  something  of  greatness  in  it,  the  fir^ 
which  is  admirable  in  itself  rather  than  intere^ing  as 
marking  a  ^age  of  progress;  he  was  nearly  fifty  before 
he  began  the  series  of  pidtures  dealing  with  the  life  o£ 
sailors  and  fishermen  which  sho^ved  him  definitely 
as  a  great  figure  painter  and  an  interpreter  of  humans: 
ity;  and  he  was  sixty  vs^hen  he  painted  one  of  the  la^ 
and  greater  of  them.  Finally,  he  was  fiftyfour  vv^hen 
he  painted  the  fir^  of  those  pidtures  of  surf  and  shore, 
marines  ^vithout  figures  or  v^ith  figures  of  minor  im^s 
portance,  by  ^vhich  he  is  be^  known  to  the  great  pub:= 
lie;  and  ten  or  twelve  years  older  v/hen  some  of  the 
be^  of  them  were  produced.  If  he  had  died  at  forty 
he  would  not  now^  be  considered  a  painter  of  any  im^ 
portance.  If  he  had  died  at  fifty  he  would  be  remem^ 
bered  as  an  arti^  of  great  promise  and  as  the  author 
of  a  few  pidtures  in  vv^hich  promise  had  become  per? 
formance.  It  is  because  he  lived  to  be  seventy  four  that 
his  career  is  the  great  and  rounded  whole  v/e  know. 

There  w^ere  reasons  internal  as  well  as  external  for 
this  slo^vness  of  development,  but  the  moiA  important 
reasons  were  internal.  It  v^as,  in  a  sense,  the  very 
lAurdiness  and  independence  of  Homer's  charadter, 
and  the  clearness  of  his  vision  of  v/hat  he  wanted  to 


20 


do,  that  kept  him  so  long  learning  to  do  it.  We  have 
seen  hov^  Kttle  \vas  the  formal  training  he  had,  with 
what  a  slender  equipment  of  previous  ^udy  he  set  out 
to  express  himself  in  paint,  and  how  his  earHe^  v/orks 
are  saved  from  utter  insignificance  only  by  his  native 
gift  of  observation,  the  manner  of  expression  being 
w^orse  than  negligible.  Now^  there  v/ere,  even  in  the 
sixties,  and  even  for  a  man  w^ith  his  Kving  to  earn  by 
illu^ration  or  other  hack  work,  opportunities  for  a 
fuller  education  in  the  technic  of  his  profession  than 
Homer  chose  to  give  himself;  and  if  he  had  as  little 
such  education  as  a  Che^er  Harding,  it  was  not,  as  in 
Harding's  case,  because  there  ^vas  none  to  be  had,  but 
because  he  would  not  have  it.  He  was  never  docile 
enough  to  learn  from  others.  While  he  w^as  ^ill  a 
hthographer's  apprentice  in  Boston  he  had  said  to 
FoxcroftCole,  ''if  a  man  wants  to  be  an  arti^  he  mu^ 
never  look  at  pidlures,''  and  in  that  faith  he  lived  and 
died.  At  no  time  of  his  career  did  he  show  much  in? 
tere^  in  the  v^ork  of  other  men  or  betray  any  need  of 
that  give  and  take  of  discussion  which  forms  what  is 
known  as  an  ''arti^ic  atmosphere,''  or  of  that  criti? 
cism  from  those  ^vho  know  v^ithout  v/hich  even  a 
Donatello  was  afraid  of  deterioration.  He  ^ood  alone 
and  v/as  sufficient  to  himself.  When,  after  his  fir^ 
successes,  he  felt  that  he  had  earned  a  trip  abroad,  he 
^vent  to  Paris,  in  1867,  and  spent  ten  months  in  that 
capital,  but  he  did  none  of  the  things  there  that  almo^ 
any  other  young  arti^  v/ould  have  done.  He  did  not 
go  into  the  schools,  he  did  not  copy  old  or  modern 


21 


makers,  he  did  not  settle  in  any  of  the  arti^ic  colo:? 
nies  or  consort  much  ^vith  other  artists;  and  if  he 
looked  at  the  pidlures  in  the  great  galleries  his  subset: 
quent  \vork  sho^vs  no  evidence  of  it.  He  came  back 
as  he  went,  and  two  or  three  illuiArations  of  Parisian 
dance  halls  or  of  copyi^s  at  v/ork  in  the  Louvre  and 
the  title  Picardie  in  the  Academy  catalogue  of  1868 
are  the  only  things  to  remind  us  that  he  v/as  ever  in 
France. 

The  choice  may  have  been  right  for  Homer,  but 
it  ^vas  a  choice  that  carried  its  penalties  with  it.  A 
painter  has,  indeed,  other  things  to  do  than  merely  to 
learn  to  paint,  but  he  has,  after  all,  to  learn  to  paint; 
and  to  insi^  on  discovering  the  yv^iy  for  one's  self  is 
often  to  take  the  longed  road  to  one's  de^ination. 
Homer  did,  in  time,  learn  to  paint  sufficiently  for  his 
purpose,  and  though  his  work  in  oils  always  lacked 
the  higher  technical  distinction  it  attained  to  a  free:^ 
dom  and  pov/er  of  expression  v/hich  fitted  it  admirably 
to  his  needs.  But  this  evolution  of  an  adequate  method 
took  a  very  long  time,  and  for  the  next  dozen  years 
the  intere^  in  his  pidlures  is  rather  in  his  experimental 
searching  for  the  subjedts  that  suited  him  than  in  any 
greatly  increased  ma^ery  in  his  rendering  of  the  sub^^ 
jedls  he  seledled. 

Had  Homer  been  adtuated  mainly  by  commercial 
considerations  he  might  ^vell  have  re^ed  where  he 
was,  and  have  gone  on,  for  some  years  at  lea^,  paints 
ing  military  subjedls.  What  he  did  \vas  the  contrary 
of  this,  and  Prisoners  from  the  Front  appears  to  have 

22 


been  the  la^  military  picture  he  ever  painted.  To  the 
same  Academy  exhibition  in  which  it  appeared  he 
sent  another  canvas  called  The  Brush  Harrov/.  I 
knov/  nothing  of  it  except  the  title,  but  that  title  leads 
one  to  suppose  that  it  v^as  his  first  attempt  at  the  treat- 
ment of  American  farm  life.  If  any  one  could  have 
painted  that  Hfe,  and  have  got  out  of  it  something 
equivalent  to  what  Millet  got  out  of  the  life  of  the 
French  peasant,  Homer  v^as  surely  the  man.  The  fad: 
that  he  failed,  as  others  have  done,  and  has  left  noth^ 
ing  important  in  that  field,  is  one  more  proof  that  the 
American  farmer  is  unpaintable.  His  co^ume  and  his 
tools  are  too  sophisticated  to  sugge^  the  real  simplicity 
and  dignity  of  his  occupation. 

For  the  next  few  years  Homer's  subjedls  are  very 
varied.  He  seems  to  be  preluding  in  several  directions, 
and  v/e  have,  among  others,  such  prophetic  titles  as 
The  Manche^er  Coa^,  1869,  and  Sail-boat,  1870.  In 
1872  he  reverted  to  the  memories  of  his  boyhood  and 
painted  The  Country  School  and  Snap  the  Whip. 
This  la^  is  one  of  the  mo^  successful  of  his  early 
pictures  and  has  been  firequently  re-exhibited.  It  is 
painted  in  a  dry  and  rather  timid  manner,  with,  hot, 
brown  undertones,  and  possesses  very  Httle  beauty; 
but  it  makes  such  an  impression  of  truth  that  it  is  quite 
unforgettable.  The  drawing,  though  awkward  in  de^ 
tails,  is  ahve;  the  boys  are  real  boys  and  are  really 
playing  v^ith  all  their  might;  the  landscape,  v/ith  its 
Httle  red  school-house,  is  thoroughly  characterized; 
and  even  the  sunKght,  though  false  in  color,  is  so  v/ell 

^3 


observed  as  to  degrees  o£  light  and  dark,  and  caiAs 
shado^vs  so  true  in  shape,  as  to  be  real,  hard,  gHttering 
sunhght.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  anyone's  loving  the 
pidlure  very  much,  but  no  one  can  help  respecting  it. 
The  Country  School  is  a  very  different  production, 
a  sketch  rather  than  a  finished  pidture — the  small  fig^ 
ures  so  slightly  painted  as  to  be  transparent  in  places, 
allo\ving  the  benches  to  be  seen  through  them — but 
a  sketch  possessing  a  breadth  of  tone  and  a  charm  of 
handhng  exceptional  in  Homer's  vv^ork.  But  for  the 
subject,  it  might  almo^  pass  for  an  early  Whistler. 
Already,  in  such  a  v/ork  as  Snap  the  W^hip, 
Homer  is  beginning  to  make  us  feel  the  glory  of  out 
of  doors,  but  to  express  it  fully  he  needed  a  larger  and 
rougher  sort  of  life  to  paint,  as  well  as  a  more  mature 
manner  of  painting  it.  In  1873  ^^  spent  a  summer  on 
Ten  Pound  Island  in  Glouce^er  Harbor,  the  imme^j 
diate  result  of  which  v/as  some  charming  v^atercolors 
of  coai^  scenes,  including  Mrs.  Lawson  Valentine's 
delightful  Berry  Pickers,  and  in  1874  he  went,  for  the 
fir^  time,  to  the  Adirondacks.  Here,  in  the  life  of 
hunters  and  guides,  was  matter  to  his  mind,  and  his 
irtyle  rose  w^ith  it.  In  1876,  v^hen  he  was  forty  years 
old,  he  painted  the  fir^  of  what  may  be  called  his 
maimer  pieces.  The  Tv^o  Guides.  The  bro^vn  under^ 
painting  is  ^ill  present,  but  the  handKng  is  larger  and 
freer,  with,  a  directness  and  suppleness  comparable 
to  that  of  his  later  Avork.  On  a  mountain  ridge  overs 
grov/n  ^vith  scrubby  bushes  ^and  the  guides,  axes  in 
hand,  one,  an  old  man  ^vith  long  gray  beard,  points 

24 


NEW  ENGLAND  COUNTRY  SCHOOL 
COLLECTION  OF  MR.  FREDERIC   FAIRCHILD  SHERMAN 

Signed  and  dated;  Homer,  1872.     Canvas,  nVs  inches  high,  17%  inches  wide. 


THE  BERRY  PICKERS 

(Water-Color) 

THE  PULSIFER  COLLECTION 

Signed  and  dated;  Homer,  July  1873.     Paper,  QVs  inches  high,  13V^  inches  wide. 


JOOHD2  YHTMUOD  QVIAJOHH  WSK 

KyvM>iacH8  ajiHD^iA^  Di^aaaji^   hm  ^o  mo: 


IT 


ing  out  some  landmark  to  his  taller  and  younger  com:; 
rade.  Beyond  the  foreground  ridge  is  a  valley  filled 
with  fleecy  cloud  that  rises  in  ragged  shapes  again^ 
the  higher  and  more  di^ant  peak,  and  floats  a^vay  to 
dissipate  itself  in  the  bright  sunshine  of  a  summer 
morning.  The  picture  is  full  of  the  joy  of  high  places 
and  the  splendor  of  fine  v^eather.  Nothing  else  that 
I  knov^  of  in  pictorial  art  so  perfectly  expresses  the 
spirit  of  Shakespeare's  ^vonderflil  image:  — 

—''And  jocund  day 
Stands  tiptoe  on  the  mi^ty  mountain  tops/' 
More  than  once,  in  later  years,  Homer  reverted  to 
the  camp  life  of  the  Adirondacks  for  his  subjects  but, 
to  my  mind,  this  fir^  of  the  Adirondack  series  re^^ 
mains  the  fine^  of  all.  Indeed  it  v^as,  for  long,  un? 
matched  in  its  po^ver  by  anything  else  he  did.  The 
year  that  it  v^as  painted,  harking  back  to  The  Bright 
Side  of  eleven  years  earlier,  he  ^vent  to  Petersburg, 
Virginia,  to  ^udy  the  negroes  again,  and  in  that  and 
the  next  year  or  two  he  painted  The  Visit  from  the 
Old  Mistress,  The  Carnival,  and  several  other  sub^ 
jects  of  Negro  Ufe;  sober  and  excellent  genre  pictures, 
but  certainly  w^ithout  the  ''Homeric''  lift  of  his  great 
successes.  Then  he  is  at  Houghton  Farm,  trying 
again,  and  again  failing,  to  find  inspiration  in  the  life 
of  the  American  farmer;  or  at  Glouce^er  and  Annis- 
quam,  doing  Schooners  at  Anchor  and  the  like,  but 
not  yet  feeling,  or  not  rendering,  the  grandeur  of  the 
sea.  His  illu^rations  for  "Harper's"  ceased  to  appear 
a  year  before  The  T^vo  Guides  \vas  painted;  his  occa^: 

^5 


sional  book  illu^rations  disappear  after  1880;  and  in 
1 88 1  began  that  experience  which  v/as,  in  so  many 
ways,  decisive  for  him,  his  two  years'  ^ay  among  the 
fisherfolkofTynemouth,nearNewca^le,in  England. 

For  even  this  mo^  native  of  American  arti^s  was 
deeply  influenced  by  a  foreign  sojourn,  only  it  was  a 
new  view  of  nature  that  afFedted  him,  not  a  new  in? 
spiration  from  art.  In  this  English  fishing  town  his 
own  peculiar  range  of  subjedts  ^vas  revealed  to  him; 
here  he  fir^  felt  to  the  full  the  romance  of  the  sea  and 
of  those  who  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships.  Here  he 
firi^  felt  the  maje^y  of  the  breakers,  the  irresi^ible 
might  of  the  surf.  Here  he  painted  his  first  scenes  of 
wreck  and  acquired  that  sense,  which  never  lefi:  him, 
of  the  perils  of  the  deep.  And  in  Tynemouth,  also, 
he  found,  or  perfedled,  his  means  of  expression.  The 
work  he  did  during  his  ^ay  there,  and  after  his  re? 
turn,  is  di^inguished  firom  that  which  w^ent  before 
not  merely  by  a  greater  dramatic  intensity  and  a 
broader  and  more  profound  feeling,  but  by  ^r iking 
alterations  of  style. 

The  fir^  and  moirt  important  of  the  effedls  of  the 
Tynemouth  visit  upon  Homer's  ^yle  is  the  awak? 
ening  in  him  of  a  sense  of  human  beauty  and,  par? 
ticularly,  of  the  beauty  of  v^omanhood.  Hitherto  he 
had  made  some  unconvincing  attempts  at  beflounced 
ladies  in  bugles  and  chignons,  and  had  dra^wn,  with 
much  more  feeling  and  veracity,  certain  slim  Yankee 
girls  in  limp  skirts  and  gingham  sunbonnets.  Now 
he  saw  for  the  first  time,  in  these  robu^  English  fish? 

26 


wives,  a  type  of  figure  matching  in  its  nobility  and 
simplicity  the  elemental  forces  of  nature;  a  type 
which  lent  itself  admirably  to  his  love  of  weight  and 
sohdity.  Not  from  art,  but  from  life,  he  learned  the 
meaning  of  classic  breadth  and  serenity,  and  his  idea 
of  figure  drawing  was  transformed  and  enlarged. 
The  memory  of  this  type  remains  ever  v/ith  him, 
and  henceforth  his  w^omen  be  they  nearly  pretty  or 
frankly  ugly,  are,  Hke  his  men,  grandly  and  gener? 
ously  built. 

It  may  v/ell  be  that  the  large,  slow  ge^ure  of  these 
figures  had  some  influence  in  the  sudden  development 
in  Homer  of  a  sense  of  the  rhythm  of  line.  Certainly 
it  is  in  his  great  Tynemouth  watercolors  that  the  pos= 
session  of  this  sense  is  decisively  announced.  He  had 
alw^ays  a  ^rong  feeKng  for  spacing;  from  the  begin? 
ning  he  put  his  subjedt  rightly  upon  his  paper  or  his 
canvas,  and  balanced  his  full  and  empty  spaces  with 
fehcity.  It  is  in  such  compositions  as  Inside  the  Bar 
and  A  Voice  fi:om  the  CUffs  that  he  adds  to  his  pat- 
tern  the  element  of  flov/ing,  leading  and  redupKcat? 
ing  lines,  and  becomes,  what  he  remains,  a  ma^er 
designer.  A  Voice  from  the  Cliffs  is  as  complete  in 
its  unified  grouping  of  three  figures  as  anything  you 
shall  find  in  art,  and  Homer  himself  could  not  improve 
upon  it.  Some  four  years  later  he  took  it  up  again,  on 
a  larger  scale  and  in  oils,  when  it  became  Hark!  the 
Lark;  but  it  lo^  as  much  in  beauty  by  the  absence  of 
the  great  bounding4ine  of  the  cUff  and,  especially,  by 
the  omission  of  the  boat  and  sail,  which  carries  on  so 

^7 


happily  the  Une  of  the  out^retched  arms,  as  it  gained 
in  height  and  dignity  by  the  addition  of  the  lov^er  part 
of  the  figures.  Both  are  admirable  compositions,  but 
the  earlier  seems  to  me  the  finer  of  the  two. 

Another  important  element  of  Homer's  art  that 
seems  to  have  come  firom  his  Indies  on  the  shore  of 
the  North  Sea  is  his  feeling  for  the  beauty  of  atmos? 
phere,  the  enshrouding  my^ery  of  air  that  is  charged 
^vith  moi^ure,  the  poetry  o£{og  and  mi^.  His  earHer 
works  v/ere  painted  in  the  clear,  sharp  air  of  his  native 
Nev7  England  and,  for  the  mo^  part,  in  full  sunlight, 
and  everything  ^ands  out  in  them  hard  edged  and  im^ 
placably  revealed.  In  The  T^vo  Guides  this  gHttering 
mountain  clearness  is  exhilarating,  but  oftener  it  is 
rather  digressing  in  its  expHcitness.  At  Tynemouth 
he  learned  to  envelop  his  figures  in  fleecy  softness  and 
to  place  his  landscape  in  the  sky  rather  than  in  firont 
of  it.  Something  o(  the  old  hardness  returns  in  one 
or  t^vo  of  his  later  pidtures,  usually  v^here  it  intensi^^ 
fies  the  sentiment  of  the  subjedt,  and  in  his  sub^trop^ 
ical  scenes  he  combines  his  old  love  o£  sunKght  -with 
that  fullness  of  color  v/hich  alone  makes  intensity  of 
light  bearable  and  beautifiil;  but  his  ne^v  sense  of  the 
enveloping  atmosphere  is  a  permanent  acquisition, 
without  which  the  creation  o{  his  great  sea  dramas 
would  hardly  have  been  possible. 

These  ne^v  and  important  elements  o£  Homer's 
art,  brought  ^vith  them,  of  necessity,  a  new  sy^em 
of  coloring  and  a  ne^v  handling  of  material.  The 
work  he  did  during  the  two  years  he  spent  in  Tyne^^ 

28 


moutli  was  entirely  in  watercolor,  so  tkat  the  changes 
brought  about  in  his  method  of  painting  in  oil  mu^  be 
looked  for  in  the  pictures  painted  immediately  after 
his  return  to  America.  In  these  pictures  the  brown 
under^^painting  has  entirely  disappeared,  the  general 
tone  becoming  cool  and  silvery,  while  the  paint  is  laid 
on  direcftly  with  a  free  and  full  brush.  It  is  hence:= 
forth  modern  painting  that  Homer  practises,  marked 
by  nothing  of  the  old  timidity  and  thinness  and  show^^ 
ing,  on  the  other  hand,  no  search  for  technical  niceties 
of  any  kind.  He  attacks  his  subjedl  with  forthright 
simphcity  and  sincerity,  caring  only  for  the  truth  of 
his  representation  and  scarcely  at  all  for  the  manner 
of  it,  and  in  this  his  art  is  charadteri^ic  of  his  time — 
of  that  latter  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  which 
all  the  be^  of  it  was  produced. 

Thus,  in  matter  and  in  manner.  Homer  has  defi^: 
nitely  found  himself.  After  this  time,  though  not  all 
his  ^vo^k  is  o£  equal  value,  it  is  all  mature  work ;  all 
marked  with  the  charadleri^ics  that  his  name  calls 
up  for  us;  all  sealed  with  his  seal.  And  though  he  is 
never  to  cease  from  experimenting,  from  going  afield 
after  nev^  subjedls  and  making  new  and  surprising 
discoveries,  yet  he  shoves  us  only  new  aspedts  of  one 
clear  and  decided  personaKty.  We  have  no  longer 
to  deal  v^ith  foreshadowing  s  of  the  Winslow  Homer 
that  is  to  be,  but  with  varying  manife^ations  of  the 
V/inslow  Homer  that  is. 


29 


PART  Three 

As  IF  to  signalize  his  arrival  at  the  full  maturity  of 
J'X^  his  talent,  Homer  left  Nev/  York  in  i884,  tak=: 
ing  with  him  t^vo  unfinished  canvases.  The  Life  Line 
and  Undertow,  and  settled  himself  at  Prout's  Neck, 
w^here  he  ^vas  farther  removed  than  ever  before  fi:om 
all  extraneous  arti^ic  influences.  There  he  made  his 
home  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  and  there  he  painted  all 
those  pidtures  of  his  later  years  v/hich  have  assured 
his  fame. 

Prout's  Neck  is  a  rocky  promontory  on  the  east 
side  o£  Saco  Bay  in  the  tow^n  of  Scarboro,  Maine. 
V/hat  it  is  like  no  admirer  of  Homer's  pidlures  needs 
to  be  told  but,  during  much  of  his  life  there,  it  was 
not  so  lonely  a  place  as  one  would  be  tempted  to  im^ 
agine.  Arthur  B.  Homer  had  discovered  the  point 
in  1875  and  regularly  spent  his  summers  there  from 
that  year.  He  was  joined,  later,  by  his  father  and 
his  brother  Charles,  and  Winslow  had  visited  them 
there  more  than  once  before  he  decided  to  build  a  cot^ 
tage  and  studio  and  make  it  his  permanent  residence. 
We  are  told  that  the  Homers  ''bought  up  mo^  of  the 
land  on  the  v^ater  front,  and  set  out  to  develop  the 
place  systematically  as  a  summer  resort,''  v^ith  the 
result  that,  before  the  arti^'s  death,  there  were  sixty^ 
seven  houses  on  the  neck  and  seven  hotels.  In  such 
a  place  he  could  not  lead  quite  the  hermit4ike  life 
vv^hich  legend  has  given  him,  but  he  v/as  pretty  effect 
tually  secluded  firom  professional  companionship,  and 

30 


as  he  gre\v  older  fewer  people  o{  any  sort  were  ad- 
mitted to  his  ^udio.  He  lived  alone,  cooking  for  him? 
self  and,  it  is  said,  cooking  extremely  \vell,  and  em? 
ploying  only  a  man  vv^ho  came  in  each  morning  to  '  'do 
the  chores."  He  was  fond  of  a  certain  amount  of  man? 
ual  labor,  building  ^one  walls,  dog  houses  and  the  like, 
and  cultivating  an  old  fashioned  flovv^er  and  vegetable 
garden.  At  one  time  he  even  attempted  to  grow  and 
cure  his  own  tobacco  and  to  roll  his  ov/n  cigars. 

There  is  nothing  surprising  in  the  fadt  that  Homer, 
v^ho  ^vas  nov^  becoming  more  and  more  definitely  a 
painter  of  the  sea,  should  have  chosen  for  his  summer 
home  a  place  where  he  could  live  continually  with 
his  chosen  subjed:;  but  almost  any  other  man  would 
have  retained  a  ^udio  in  the  city  for  those  months 
when  even  he  found  the  climate  of  Prout's  Neck  too 
rigorous  and  its  soKtude  too  absolute.  Almo^  any 
other  man  \vould  have  taken  some  pains  to  maintain 
his  relationship  with  his  brother  arti^s  and  to  keep 
in  touch  v/ith  v^hat  they  v/ere  doing.  It  is  charac? 
teristic  of  Homer  that  w^hen  he  retired  to  his  sea^shore 
^udio  he  shut  the  door  after  him.  About  1888  he 
ceased  to  contribute  voluntarily  to  the  exhibitions  or 
even  to  pay  much  attention  to  invitations  to  exhibit, 
and  mo^  of  his  pidlures  shown  after  that  date  were 
borrowed  from  ov/ners  or  dealers.  When  Prout's 
Neck  became  uninhabitable  he  ^vent  south  to  Florida 
or  the  Bahamas  and  filled  his  portfolios  with  the  won? 
derful  watercolor  sketches  we  know,  and  by  March 
he  was  back  again  in  Maine.    Except  for  rare  appear? 

31 


ances,  one  or  two  of  tkem  for  tKe  purpose  of  serving 
on  tke  juries  of  important  exhibitions,  his  fellows 
knev/  him  no  more;  and  many  of  his  younger  con? 
temporaries,  myself  among  the  number,  never  so 
much  as  saw  the  man. 

Homer's  fir^  voyage  to  Nassau  and  Cuba  took 
place  in  the  winter  of  1885^6,  though  the  two  import? 
ant  oil  paintings  of  V/e^  Indian  subjedls.  The  Gulf 
Stream  and  Search  Light — Santiago,  were  not  fin? 
ished  until  1899.  During  these  later  years,  also,  his 
trips  to  the  Adirondacks  were  repeated,  and  his  search 
for  ^udy  combined  with  recreation  took  him  into 
Canada,  but  the  greater  number  of  his  pid-nres,  exclu? 
sive,  of  course,  of  his  deep?sea  subjects,  were  painted 
not  only  in  but  o(  Prout's  Neck,  and  the  place  is  in? 
deUbly  associated  ^th  his  name. 

The  two  pictures  Homer  took  w^ith  him  to  Prout's 
Neck  had  been  conceived  in  1883  at  Atlantic  City, 
where  he  had  gone  especially  to  ^udy  the  subjedl  of 
The  Life  Line  and  where  he  ^vitnessed  the  rescue 
from  drov/ning  ^vhich  suggei^ed  Undertow,  and  they 
had  been  begun  in  his  Ne^v  York  i^udio.  The  fir^ 
was  rapidly  completed  and  exhibited  in  1884,  and  the 
second  ^vas  finished  two  years  later.  The  series  of 
works  belonging  entirely  to  his  Prout's  Neck  period 
begins  with  the  two  great  pidlures  o£  1885  dealing 
^vith  the  lives  of  the  Banks  fishermen.  The  Fog 
V/arning  and  The  Herring  Net.  In  1886  Homer  ^vas 
fifty,  and  again  the  decade  is  marked  off  by  a  pidture 
of  especial  importance.  This  time  it  is  the  noblei^  and 

3^ 


A  VOICE  FROM  THE  CLIFFS 

(Water-Color) 

COLLECTION  OF  DR.  ALEXANDER  C.   HUMPHREYS 

Signed  and  dated;  Winslow  Homer,  1883.     Paper,  203/^  inches  high,  29^4  inches  wide. 


THE  WEST  V/IND 

COLLECTION  OF  MR.   SAMUEL  UNTERMYER 

Signed  and  dated;  Winslow  Homer.  1891.     Canvas,  30y2  inches  high,  441/4  inches  wide. 


r.i^li.,'  :iHT  MC 


••^t)'^^  {\COS  .-iaqi  .7  thstsb  bns  fa^ngfa 


tKe  quieted  of  all  his  figure  pidtures.  Eight  Bells,  and 
ju^  ten  years  later  he  rose  again  to  something  like  the 
same  level  of  serene  power  in  The  Lookout — All's 
Well.  The  la^  of  his  pictures  of  seafaring  life  was 
the  extraordinary  Kissing  the  Moon  of  1904.  The 
series  of  great  pictures  of  rock  and  surf,  in  which  the 
sea  is  itself  the  principal  subjedt,  the  human  figure  be^ 
ing  altogether  absent  or  reduced  to  a  minor  role — the 
series  which  marks  Homer  as  the  greater  of  marine 
painters —seems  to  have  begun  in  1890  with  Sunlight 
on  the  Coa^  and  the  fir^  Coa^  in  Winter  (there  is 
another  pidlure,  of  a  year  or  two  later,  with  the  same 
title)  and  thereafter  one  or  more  such  pidlures  can  be 
placed  in  each  year  until  1897.  After  that  date  there 
are  fewer  of  them,  though  the  Early  Morning  after 
Storm  at  Sea  is  of  1902  and  the  la^  of  them  is  the  la^ 
pidture  he  finished,  the  Driftwood  of  1909,  To  name 
but  the  mo^  important,  the  Luxembourg  pidlure,  A 
Summer  Night,  is  of  1890;  The  We^  \Vind  is  of 
1891;  High  Cliff — Coa^  of  Maine  is  of  1894;  Cannon 
Rock  and  Northea^er  are  of  1895;  and  Maine  Coa^ 
and  Watching  the  Breakers  of  1896. 

There  are  those  who  objed:  to  the  more  dramatic 
of  Homer's  subjedt  pictures,  such  as  The  Life  Line 
and  Undertov/  or  the  much  later  Gulf  Stream  for 
their  ''^ory^telling''  quaKty.  If,  indeed,  it  is  an  arti^ic 
sin  to  be  intere^ed  in  life  and  death  as  w^ell  as  in  paints 
ing — to  care  for  the  significance  of  things  as  well  as  for 
their  shapes  and  colors — then  Homer  muA  bear  the 
odium  of  this  sin  with  Michelangelo  and  Rembrandt 

33 


and  almo^  all  the  greater  artiiAs  of  tKe  world.  But, 
he  it  noted,  it  is  never  a  trivial  anecdote  that  Homer 
tells,  but  a  ^ory  of  big  and  simple  issues  and  of  power:? 
ful  human  appeal;  and  it  is  never  a  special  tale,  need^^ 
ing  knov/ledge  of  something  outside  the  canvas  for  its 
comprehension.  He  attempts  no  complicated  narra? 
tion  but  seizes  upon  a  single  moment,  in  which  all 
that  it  is  necessary  to  kno^v  of  what  has  gone  before 
or  ^vhat  is  to  come  after  is  implicit,  and  he  depidts 
that  moment  with  the  utmo^  diredlness  and  po^ver, 
disencumbering  it  of  all  side  issues  and  of  all  unimpor? 
tant  accessories.  It  is  not  whether  an  arti^  tells  Tories 
that  is  important,  but  v/hat  Tories  he  tells  and  ho\v  he 
tells  them,  and  I  know  no  pictures  that  could  better 
serve  than  these  of  Homer's  as  examples  of  the  kind 
of  Tories  that  are  suited  to  pidlorial  telling  and  of  the 
manner  in  which  such  Tories  should  be  told. 

It  is  only  in  the  fir^  of  them  that  the  illu^rative 
intere^  at  all  overbears  that  which  is  more  purely 
pidtorial,  and  this  is  not  because  of  too  much  intere^ 
in  the  ^ory,  but  because  the  pidture,  as  such,  is  not  so 
perfedl  as  those  of  a  little  later  date.  The  concentra^? 
tion  of  attention  on  the  fainting  figure  of  the  woman, 
the  energy  in  the  attitude  of  the  sailor  ^vho  carries 
her,  the  sense  of  rapid  motion  conveyed  by  the  diag^ 
onal  hne  of  the  rope  and  the  blowing  scarf  and  go^svn 
— these  are  not  faults  but  virtues,  and  virtues  of  a  high 
order.  One  could  perhaps  ^vish  that  the  go^vn  ^vere 
not  torn  quite  Avhere  it  is,  but  this  is  a  fault  of  illu^ra^s 
tion,  not  a  fault  of  painting.    It  is  because  neither  the 

34 


THE  HERRING  NET 

COLLECTION  OF  MR.  CHARLES  \V.   GOULD 

Canvas,  29V^  inches  high,  47^2  inches  wide.     (Sight  measurements.) 


1 

I 

^ 

™ 

■1 

)X 

^^1 

i 

'I 

^^^E^-  ^V  ^^ 

1%, 

^^ 

1  ^jfesifl^R^^^^V^^I 

I^^B 

Rp^^^V/f  ^^^^H^hJI 

^^MH 

Kf^^yBBR! 

jj^P^P* 

B^  ^ ' 

^^^^^■s- 

^^^Hkv 

^^^Hv^ 

Hi/ ' 

I 


dravv^ing  nor  the  color  are  quite  at  Homer's  highe^ 
level  that  the  pidlure  mu^  take  a  second  rank. 

Underto^v  is  quite  as  vivid  and  as  gripping  in  the 
telling  of  its  ^ory  as  The  Life  Line,  but  its  technical 
merits  are  far  greater.  The  composition  of  the  Unked 
figures  makes  an  admirable  pattern,  and  the  figure 
drawing  is  Homer's  highe^  achievement  in  that  Kne. 
Nowhere  is  his  feeKng  for  robu^  beauty  so  evident  as 
in  the  almo^  classic  proportions  of  the  women  clasped 
in  each  other's  arms,  and  the  only  face  clearly  visible 
is  like  the  face  of  the  Greek  Hypnos.  It  ^vould  be  a 
great  picture  if  it  had  no  ^ory  at  all — it  is  the  greater 
because  it  has  a  thrilling  ^ory  grandly  told. 

In  this  pidture  the  arti^'s  old  deKght  in  hard  and 
brilliant  sunlight  is  put  to  use  in  intensifying,  by  con- 
tra^, the  tragic  character  of  the  subjed:,  and  it  is  so 
used  again  in  the  deeper  tragedy  of  The  Gulf  Stream; 
but  even  this  mo^  dramatic  of  Homer's  pictures,  su^ 
perbly  illu^rative  as  it  is,  is  by  no  means  an  iUu^ra;: 
tion  only.  The  figure  of  the  Carving  negro  on  the  dis- 
mantled boat  is  small  and  carelessly  drav^n,  but  the 
play  of  line  through  the  ^vhole  composition  is  magni- 
ficent,  the  color  is  richer  and  more  powerfiil  than  in 
anything  else  its  author  did  in  oils,  and  there  are  pass- 
ages  of  sheer  rendering,  Uke  the  di^ant  ship  and  the 
rainbo\v  spray  firom  the  tail  of  the  nearer  shark,  w^hich 
are  inimitable. 

But  it  is  ^A^here  the  ^ory  is  lea^  explicit — w^here 
there  seems  no  ^ory,  but  only  ma^erly  painting  — 
that  Homer's  genius  for  the  telling  of  his  ^ory  is  mo^ 

35 


v^onderful.  To  paint  a  simple,  every^day  occurrence, 
a  part  of  the  routine  of  life,  and  by  one's  treatment  of 
it  to  reveal  its  deeper  implications  and  make  manife^ 
the  dignity  and  the  romance  of  the  life  of  ^svhich  it 
forms  a  part — that  is  what  Millet  did  for  the  tillers 
o(  the  soil  and  \vhat  Homer  does  for  the  fisherman 
and  the  sailor.  Take,  as  an  in^ance  of  this.  The  Fog 
W^arning.  Here  is  a  halibut  fisher  rowing  in  v^ith 
his  catch  and,  as  his  dory  rises  on  the  back  of  the  long 
wave,  looking  over  his  shoulder  to  make  sure  of  the 
diredtion  of  the  schooner  to  v^hich  he  is  returning. 
Nothing  could  be  simpler  than  the  attitude  o£  the 
man,  rowing  lAeadily  and  easily,  and  there  is  no  sug^ 
ge^ion  of  temped  or  v/reck  in  this  dark  sea  barely 
breaking  into  a  white^cap  here  and  there  under  the 
influence  of  a  fi:esh  breeze.  But  across  the  horizon  lies 
a  long  bank  offog,  and  firom  it  rise  diagonally  two  or 
three  ragged  dreamers  ^vhich  show  that  it  is  begins 
ning  to  move  toward  us.  It  is  enough,  and  one  is  as 
conscious  of  the  mo^  insidious  and  deadly  of  the 
fisherman's  perils  as  o£  the  matter^^of-course  way  in 
which  it  is  met  as  a  part  of  the  day's  v/ork. 

In  the  greater  of  salt  sea  epics.  Eight  Bells,  there  is 
not  even  so  much  sugge^ion  of  danger.  Here  is  a 
cloudy  sky  through  \vhich  the  sun  breaks  dimly,  cast:^ 
ing  a  gleam  upon  a  flat  and  tumbled  sea,  and  against  it 
two  or  three  Hnes  of  cordage  shov^  that  the  ship  rides 
on  an  even  keel.  Upon  the  level  deck  ^and  t^vo  men 
in  oilskins,  the  skipper  and  his  mate,  occupied  with 
the  mo^  regularly  recurring  of  their  daily  tasks,  the 

3^ 


taking  of  the  noonday  observation.  They  do  it  as  a 
maid  would  wash  the  dishes  or  as  a  farmer  would  hoe 
his  corn,  yet  one  is  made  to  feel  to  the  full  the  import; 
tance  of  this  daily  ad;  upon  ^vhich  the  safety  of  the 
ship  depends.  Exacftly  in  the  routine  nature  of  the 
business  seems  to  He  a  great  part  of  its  significance, 
and  the  vv^hole  life  of  the  sailor  is  included  in  it. 

It  is  in  reality  this  same  gift  of  ^ory  telling  —  this 
faculty  of  dvv^elling  on  the  essentials  of  the  subjedt  and 
of  excluding  or  subordinating  less  important  things — 
that  makes  Homer's  surf  pictures  the  triumphs  they 
are.  Whi^ler  could  make  The  Blue  Wave,  or  some 
of  his  late  sea  pieces,  bits  of  pure  decoration.  Homer, 
also,  \vas  not  insensible  to  this  decorative  beauty  of 
the  sea,  as  he  has  shown  now  and  again,  but  generally 
he  seizes  upon  the  v/eight  and  bulk  of  v^ater,  upon  the 
battering  and  rending  po\ver  of  the  v/av^e,  as  upon  the 
things  essential  to  be  told,  and  these  things  he  depidls 
as  no  one  else  has  ever  done.  There  has  never  been 
any  difference  of  opinion  about  this  late^  phase  of 
Homer's  art,  and  his  pure  marines  are  universally  ac^ 
cepted  as  the  greate^  ever  painted.  Yet  I  think  the 
kind  of  genius  that  created  them  is  present  in  even 
fuller  measure  in  the  fine^  of  his  figure  pidlures. 

After  1900  Homer's  powers  may  be  said  to  have 
been  on  the  decHne.  He  v/as  ^ill  to  do  things  that 
we  should  be  sorry  to  lose,  but  his  greater  pictures 
were  painted,  and  his  inspirations  came  more  rarely. 
He  had  never  allowed  himself  to  work  by  formulae, 
and  he  could  not  go  on  painting  from  sheer  inertia. 

37 


He  had  alw^ays  been  dependent  upon  the  immediate 
sugge^ion  of  nature  or  on  the  vivified  memory  of  such 
sugge^ion,  andv^as  apt  to  feel,  after  each  period  ofejc^i 
hauling  creation,  that  there  ^ver^  no  more  inspira? 
tions  to  come,  and  that  his  work  was  done.  As  early 
as  1893,  ju^  after  the  recipt  of  that  gold  medal  of  the 
Columbian  Exposition  v/hich  ^vas  the  firiA  of  those 
honors  ^vhich  fell  thickly  upon  his  declining  years,  he 
v/rote:  ''At  present  and  for  some  time  pa^  I  see  no 
reason  why  I  should  paint  any  pidlures/'  These  mo? 
ments  of  lassitude — one  can  hardly  call  it  despondent 
cy,  for  he  v^as  fully  conscious  of  the  value  of  his  v/ork 
— became  more  frequent  as  he  gre^v  older,  and  more 
than  once  he  declared  his  intention  of  painting  no 
more.  In  1907,  a  month  or  t^vo  before  he  finished  in 
two  hours  of  ^renuous  v^ork  from  nature  that  Early 
Morning  after  Storm,  begun  tv^o  years  earlier,  "which 
seems  to  ^rike  a  new^  note  of  beauty  in  his  work,  he 
^vrote  to  Miss  Leila  Mechlin:  ''Perhaps  you  think  I 
am  ^ill  painting  and  intere^ed  in  art.  That  is  a  mistake, 
I  care  nothing  for  art.  I  no  longer  paint.  I  do  not  v/ish 
to  see  my  name  in  print  again.'' 

The  inspirations  always  returned  and  he  always 
began  again  to  paint.  Even  after  his  fir^  serious  ill= 
ness,  in  1908,  an  illness  which  made  him,  for  a  time, 
nearly  blind  and  nearly  helpless,  he  v^ould  ^ay  in  his 
brother's  house  for  only  t^vo  v/eeks.  Leaving  a  note 
behind  him  he  departed,  early  one  morning,  to  re? 
sume  work  in  his  ^udio. 

He  had,  however,  little  more  to  do  there.     He 

38 


HOUND  AND  HUNTER 

COLLECTION  OF  MR.  LOUIS  ETTLINGER 

Signed  and  dated;  Winslow  Homer,  1892.     Canvas,  28  inches  high,  47 V2  inches  wide. 


•m 


HIGH  CLIFF,  COAST  OF  MAINE 

NATIONAL  GALLERY,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C. 

EVANS  COLLECTION 

Signed  and  dated;  Homer,  1894.     Canvas,  30  inches  high,  37V2  inches  wide. 


aMIAM  lO  T8A03  .^I^IUD  HOIH 
.D     a  TH2AV/  ,Yja3aJAO  JA^IQITAM 

jfiprti  ^*^£  ,dghi  ..jdoiii  0£  ,2BvnB3 


partly  recovered  from  this  fir^  illness,  and  in  1909 
he  painted  two  or  three  canvases  \vhich  have  all  his 
old  originality  and  unexpectedness  if  not  all  his  old 
power.  The  next  summer  he  began  to  fail  visibly, 
but  maintained  that  he  ^was  ''all  right''  and  wanted 
nothing  but  to  be  left  alone.  When  at  la^  he  had  to 
take  to  his  bed  he  refused  to  be  moved  from  his  own 
house,  and  there,  where  all  his  greater  work  had 
been  done,  he  died  on  the  twenty ^ninth  day  of  Sep^ 
tember,  1910. 


PART  FOUR 


SO  far  as  we  can  judge  by  his  effedt  upon  us,  his 
contemporaries,  and  without  waiting  for  the  ver? 
did:  of  posterity,  Winslow  Homer  v/as  unquestion^^ 
ably  a  great  arti^.  He  has  given  us  pleasures  and 
sensations  different  in  kind  from  those  w^hich  we  have 
received  from  other  artists  of  his  time  and,  perhaps, 
superior  to  them  in  degree.  He  has  sho^vn  us  things 
which,  without  his  eyes,  we  should  not  have  seen 
and  impressed  us  v/ith  truths  which,  but  for  him,  we 
should  not  have  felt.  He  has  stirred  us  with  tragic 
emotion  or,  in  the  representation  of  common  every? 
day  incidents,  has  revealed  to  us  the  innate  nobiKty 
of  the  simple  and  hardy  lives  of  hunters,  fishers  and 
seafarers.  Finally,  he  has  reahzed  for  us,  as  no  other 
artist  of  any  time  has  done,  the  power  and  the  grand? 
eur  of  the  elemental  forces  of  nature,  and  has  drama? 
tized  for  us  the  conflid;  o£  water,  earth  and  air.  His 
genius  has  been  felt  alike  by  artist,  by  critic  and  by 

39 


layman,  and  it  has  been  acknov/ledged  almost  as  fully 
by  that  contemporary  posterity,  intelligent  foreign 
opinion,  as  by  the  universal  assent  of  his  country:; 
men.  No  other  American  painter  o{  his  generation 
has  been  so  v^idely  recognized  except  that  one  ^vho 
was,  in  temper  and  accomplishments,  almost  his  ex^; 
act  antithesis,  James  McNeill  \Vhistler. 

For,  surely,  no  greatly  successful  artist  ever  had 
less  care  than  Homer  for  those  decorative  and  eesthe^: 
tic  quahties  which  Whistler  proclaimed,  in  theory 
and  by  his  practise,  the  whole  of  art.  There  is  noth^: 
ing  gracious  or  insinuating,  hardly,  even,  anything 
reticent  or  mysterious,  about  the  art  of  Homer.  His 
pidtures  ^vill  not  hang  comfortably  on  a  v/all  or  in? 
vite  you  discreetly  to  the  contemplation  of  gradually 
unfolding  beauties.  They  speak  with  the  voice  of  a 
trumpet  and,  whether  they  exhilarate  or  annoy  you, 
you  cannot  negledl  them.  They  have  none  of  the 
amenities  of  the  drawingroom,  and  you  might  almost 
as  vv^ell  let  the  sea  itself  into  your  house  as  one  of 
Homer's  transcripts  of  it.  Even  in  a  great  gallery  they 
often  seem  too  trident,  too  unmitigated,  too  crude. 
If  they  do  not  conquer  you  they  surprise  and  discon^s 
cert  you. 

But  this  asperity  has  no  kinship  v/ith  the  vulgar 
noisiness  of  those  painters  v/ho,  thinking  of  the  con? 
flidt  of  the  exhibitions,  determine  to  outshout  their 
fellows  that  they  may  be  heard.  Homer  is  not  think? 
ing  of  exhibitions,  to  which  he  seldom  cared  to  send, 
any  more  than  he  is  thinking  of  the  final  destination 

40 


of  his  picture  on  someone's  walls.  He  is  not  thinking 
of  an  audience  at  all,  but  only  of  the  thing  he  has  seen 
and  of  his  effort  to  render  it  truthfully.  He  places 
himself  in  dired:  competition  with  nature,  and  if  his 
work  seems  harsh  or  violent  it  has  become  so  in  the 
effort  to  match  nature's  ^rength  with  his  own.  He 
painted  directly  from  the  objedt  whenever  that  was 
possible,  and  it  ^vas  often  possible  to  him  when  it 
might  not  be  so  to  another.  He  painted  his  All's  Well 
entirely  by  moonlight,  never  touching  it  by  day  or 
^vorking  over  it  in  the  studio.  He  had  a  portable 
painting  house  constructed,  that  he  might  work  from 
nature  in  the  bitterest  v/eather,  and  he  used  to  hang 
a  canvas  on  the  balcony  of  his  studio,  in  the  open  air, 
and  study  it  from  a  distance  ''v/ith  reference  solely,'' 
as  he  said,  ''to  its  simple  and  absolute  truth."  This 
habit  of  fighting  nature  on  her  ov^n  terms  he  carried 
into  work  that  must  necessarily  be  done  from  mem? 
ory,  and  his  studio  pictures  shov^  the  same  pitting  of 
his  powers  against  those  of  nature  as  do  his  diredl 
transcripts  from  the  thing  before  him.  He  knev/  quite 
v/ell  that  pictures  so  painted  could  not  be  properly 
seen  on  the  walls  of  a  house  or  gallery,  and'he  once 
advised  a  friend  to  look  at  one  of  his  canvases,  then  in 
a  dealer's  v/indo\v,  from  the  opposite  corner,  diagon? 
ally  across  the  street. 

And  if  Homer  has  nothing  of  Whistler's  ^stheti:= 
cism  he  has  almost  as  Uttle  of  Inness's  passion  or  of 
Homer  Martin's  reverie.  Compared  to  such  men  he 
is  quite  impersonal.     He  has  no  lyrical  fervor;  makes 


no  attempt  to  express  his  own  emotion  or  tiis  own 
mood.  His  is  the  objective  attitude  of  the  dramatist, 
and  ho^vever  much  nature  may  stimulate  or  excite 
him,  it  is  her  passion  and  her  mood  that  he  is  trying 
to  render,  not  his  own.  He  is  too  obviously  capable 
of  such  excitement,  and  too  dependent  upon  it  for  his 
best  results,  to  be  called  a  cool  observer— let  us  rather 
call  him  an  exalted  observer;  but  an  observer  and  a 
recorder  of  things  observed  he  essentially  is.  He  is 
a  kind  of  flaming  realist— a  burning  devotee  of  the 
adtual. 

Being  such  an  observer  he  was  always  making  the 
most  unexpected  observations,  and  painting  things 
that  ^vere  not  only  unpainted  till  then  but,  apparent:: 
ly,  unseen  by  anyone  else.  His  watercolor  sketches, 
in  which  he  set  dov^n  v^ith  astonishing  succintness 
and  rapidity  the  things  he  sa^v,  are  a  vast  repertory 
of  such  surprises;  but  even  in  his  more  deeply  consid? 
ered  and  long  ^vrought  pidlures  he  is  constantly  doing 
things  of  a  disturbing  originality — painting  aspedts  of 
nature  v/hich  another,  if  he  had  seen  them,  v^ould 
consider  unpaintable.  For  Homer  is  afraid  of  nothing 
and  trusts  his  own  perceptions  absolutely,  having  no 
notion  of  traditions  that  must  not  be  violated  or  of 
limits  that  cannot  be  overstepped.  That  he  has  seen 
a  thing,  and  that  it  interested  him,  is  reason  enough 
for  trying  to  paint  it.  Whether  he  fails  or  succeeds  is 
hardly  his  affair — ^vhether  the  result  is  pleasing  or 
the  reverse  is  nothing  to  him — ''I  saw  it  so;  there  it 
is/' — The  next  time  it  v^ill  be  a  ne^v  observation,  and 

42 


A  SUMMER  NIGHT 
THE  LUXEMBOURG,  PARIS 

Signed  and  dated;  Homer,  1890. 


^uoaM-ixajr  -tht 


until  there  is  a  new  observation,  he  will  paint  no  more. 
Many  men  have  sat  by  a  camp  fire  at  night  and 
have  enjoyed,  in  a  dreamy  v^ay,  \vatching  the  long 
curves  of  Kght  cut  into  the  blue  darkness  by  the  as- 
cending sparks.  V/ho  but  Homer  v/ould  have  made 
them  not  an  accessory  but  the  principle  subjed:  of  a 
pid:ure?  Who  but  Homer  has  seen  or  painted  such  a 
thing  as  that  flock  of  ravenous  crows,  starved  by  the 
long  winter,  hunting  a  Hve  fox  through  the  heavy 
snow  w^hich  retards  his  superior  speed — one  of  the 
most  superb  animal  pictures  in  the  world,  yet  pro^: 
duced  by  an  artist  v/ho  has  painted  no  other?  He 
wishes  to  paint  the  sea  by  night,  the  foam  of  breakers 
dark  against  the  glittering  wake  of  the  moon.  V/ho 
else  ^vould  not  have  feared  to  disturb  the  serenity  of 
nature  by  the  presence  of  figures,  or  v/ould  have  dared 
more,  at  most,  than  the  black,  almost  formless,  group 
of  silent  v/atchers  on  the  rocks  ?  Homer  cuts  his  fore- 
ground  with  the  long,  straight  Une  of  the  platform  of 
a  summer  cottage  or  hotel,  and  places  on  it,  illumined 
by  artificial  Hght  and  so  large  as  to  become  almost  the 
principal  subjedt  of  the  pidlure,  tw^o  girls  v^altzing 
gether.  They  ^ve^e  there;  he  saw  them  and  paint=: 
ed  them  so,  and  he  triumphs.  The  girls  and  the  sea 
dance  together,  and  the  very  spirit  of  A  Summer 
Night  is  fixed  upon  the  canvas.  Everyone  has  seen 
the  moon  rise  at  sunset,  and  many  men  must  have 
seen  the  figures  in  a  boat  when  the  boat  itself  v/as 
hidden  in  the  trough  of  the  sea.  If  any  painter  saw 
it,  before  Homer  painted  his  Kissing  the  Moon,  he  as^ 

43 


surcdly  thought  the  subjedt  impossible.  Homer  ad^ 
mits  no  impossibilities,  and  having  seen  it  he  painted 
it,  the  three  heads  red  against  the  gray=:green  sea  and 
the  moon  like  a  fourth  in  the  group,  only  a  touch  and 
a  sweep  of  light  on  the  shaft  of  an  oar  to  indicate  that 
there  is  anything  to  support  these  solid  figures  in  their 
strange  position.  You  gasp,  once,  at  the  unexpedted? 
ness  of  the  impression,  and  then  accept  it  as  obvious 
truth. 

These  surprise  pidtures  are  not  al-ways,  or  necess: 
sarily.  Homer's  best;  some  of  his  greatest  successes 
are  attained  ^svhen  dealing  with  subjedls  that  anyone 
might  have  chosen.  But  in  his  treatment  of  such  sub? 
jedts  there  is  aWays  the  sense  of  new  and  personal 
vision;  the  things  have  not  been  painted  by  him  bes= 
cause  others  had  painted  them,  but  rather  in  spite  of 
that  fadl.  He  has  seen  them  afiresh  for  himself,  and  he 
does  not  choose  to  be  deterred  fi:om  painting  them  be? 
cause  others  have  seen  them  also.  In  a  hundred  little 
things  you  will  have  the  evidence  of  the  lucidity,  the 
acuity  and  the  originality  of  his  observation.  The 
unexpedledness  is  merely  transferred  fi?om  the  v/hole 
to  the  details. 

Such  being  the  observer,  the  recorder  of  observa? 
tions  spares  no  pains  to  make  his  record  as  truthfijl  as 
possible.  He  -will  not  trust  his  memory  or  his  notes 
any  farther  than  he  must.  He  will  produce  as  nearly 
as  possible  the  conditions  of  his  original  observation, 
that  the  details  may  be  filled  in  v/ith  his  eye  upon  the 
objedt;  and  he  ^vill  do  this  not  because  his  memory  is 

44 


weak,  but  rather  because  it  is  so  strong  tbat  he  is  sure 
not  to  lose  sight  of  his  original  impression  while  veri^ 
fying  the  details  by  renewed  experiment.  The  studio 
in  the  old  University  Building  in  Washington  Square, 
v/hich  he  occupied  from  1861  to  1884,  was  a  room  in 
the  tower  vv^ith  a  door  opening  upon  the  flat  roof  of 
the  main  building  \vhere  he  could  pose  his  models  be:: 
neath  the  sky.  Most  artists  of  his  time  painted,  as 
most  artists  still  do,  diredt  from  the  model;  and  many 
of  them  would  have  been  glad  of  his  opportunity  to 
paint  in  the  open  air.  Not  many,  perhaps,  ^vould 
have  pushed  the  love  of  exactitude  so  far  as  he  did 
when  he  painted  the  figures  of  his  Undertow  from 
models  kept  wet  by  continual  dousing  v^ith  buckets 
of  w^ater  kept  at  hand  for  the  purpose.  This  reminds 
one  of  some  of  Meissonier's  expedients  for  securing 
accuracy;  the  result  v^as  different  because  Homer 
had  a  far  firmer  grasp  of  the  total  effed:  than  Meisson- 
ier  ever  possessed,  and  did  not  allow  his  pursuit  of 
minor  fadts  to  obscure  his  vision  of  the  essential  ones. 
There  are  other  tales  of  his  scrupulousness,  such  as 
his  propping  up  the  dory  of  The  Fog  Warning,  at  the 
necessary  angle,  against  a  sand  dune  on  the  beach  and 
posing  his  fisherman  model  in  it;  or  his  modelling  in 
clay  the  ship's  bell  of  All's  \Vell  when  he  could  not 
find  one  to  his  mind  in  the  junk  shops  of  Boston;  but 
more  impressive  are  the  evidences  of  another  kind  of 
scruple,  an  anxiety  for  exactitude  of  effed:  which  re- 
minds one  more  of  Monet  than  of  Meissonier.  He 
often  waited  weeks  and  months  for  just  the  effed:  he 

45 


wanted,  and  seemed  to  his  intimates  unreasonably 
idle,  because  he  could  not  go  on  vv^ith  the  pidture  he 
was  interested  in  and  could  paint  nothing  else  until 
that  was  completed.  Shooting  the  Rapids,  now  in 
the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  New  York,  ^vas  begun 
in  1904,  and  Homer  expedled  to  complete  it  easily  as 
he  had  made  many  studies  for  it;  but  he  could  not  sat^ 
isfy  himself  without  another  trip  to  the  Upper  Sague^ 
nay  to  restudy  it  from  nature,  and  it  remained  unfin? 
ished  at  the  time  of  his  death.  The  Early  Morning 
after  Storm  at  Sea  ^vas  two  years  on  his  easel  and, 
during  that  time,  was  the  subjedl  of  a  rather  volumin? 
ous  correspondence  with  the  dealers  ^who  had  ordered 
it.  Homer's  excuse  for  delay  is  al^vays  that  he  must 
''have  a  crack  at  it  out  of  doors,''  as  he  is  not  satisfied 
to  ^vork  fi:om  his  original  study.  In  March  of  1902  he 
v/rites:  "•Afi:er  waiting  a  full  year,  looking  out  every 
day  for  it — I  got  the  light  and  the  sea  that  I  \vanted; 
but  as  it  was  very  cold  I  had  to  paint  out  of  my  v^in^: 
dovv^,  and  I  was  a  little  too  far  av/ay— it  is  not  good 
enough  yet,  and  I  must  have  another  painting  fi:om 
nature  on  it."  Finally,  seven  months  later,  he  v/rites 
again:  ''The  long  looked  for  day  arrived,  and  fi?om  6 
to  8  o'clock  A.  M.  I  painted  firom  nature — finishing 
it, — making  the  fourth  painting  on  this  canvas  of  two 
hours  each." 

To  Homer's  ov^n  consciousness  this  acuteness  of 
perception  and  this  thorough  and  pains^taking  realiza^ 
tion  v/ere  all  there  v/as  to  his  art.  He  had  no  patience 
with  theories  and  would  seldom  talk  about  painting 

46 


THE  FOX  HUNT 

THE  PENNSYLVANIA  ACADEMY  OF  FINE  ARTS 

Signed  and  dated;  Homer,  1893.     Canvas,  38^/^  inches  high,  68Vi  inches  wide. 


at  all.  A  fellow  artist,  since  distinguished  as  a  mural 
painter,  once  tried  to  express  Kis  admiration  for  the 
composition  of  Une  and  space  in  Homer's  pictures, 
but  he  found  the  master  blankly  unresponsive  and 
incKned  to  deny  the  existence  of  any  such  qualities 
either  in  his  own  v^ork  or  elsewhere — professing,  in^^ 
deed,  not  to  know  v^hat  \vas  meant  by  the  language 
employed.  This  can  hardly  have  been  affectation  in 
him — one  cannot  conceive  Homer  as  affedled  in  any^ 
thing.  He  seems  honestly  to  have  believed  that  it  is 
only  necessary  to  knov/  hov/  to  see  and,  above  all,  to 
knov/  a  good  thing  when  one  sees  it,  and  then  to  copy 
the  thing  seen  as  accurately  as  possible.  He  believed 
that  he  altered  nothing  and  said  to  Mr.  John  W. 
Beatty:  ''When  I  have  selected  a  thing  carefully,  I 
paint  it  exadtly  as  it  appears.''  It  is  an  illusion  shared 
by  other  painters  of  our  day,  and  one  can  see  how 
Homer  might  have  cherished  it  with  regard  to  his 
marines — how,  having  chosen  well,  he  might  not 
consciously  change  so  much  as  the  line  of  a  rock  crest 
or  the  color  of  the  shadow  under  the  top  of  a  ^vave. 
It  is  more  difficult  to  see  how  he  could  have  been  un? 
av^are  of  the  po^ve^s  of  arrangement  and  interpreta^: 
tion  implied  in  the  creation  of  his  figure  pictures,  but 
he  seems  to  have  been  so.  He  ^vas  not  averse,  upon 
occasion,  from  mentioning  the  merits  of  his  ^vork,  but 
it  is  alv/ays  accuracy  of  observation  and  of  record  that 
he  praises;  and  if  we  accept  his  own  estimate  of  him^ 
self  it  is  as  a  gifted  reporter  that  w^e  shall  think  of  him, 
hardly  as  a  creator. 

47 


PART  FIVE 


rr  IS,  of  course,  quite  impossible  to  accept  such  an 
estimate  as  final.  Extraordinary  as  are  Homer's 
powers  o£  observation  and  o£  record,  such  pov/ers 
^vill  not,  alone,  account  for  the  effedls  he  produced. 
A  veracious  reporter  he  undoubtedly  v/as,  but  he 
must  have  been  something  more  and  other  than  a 
reporter  however  veracious.  His  great  pictures  are 
either  intensely  dramatic  or  grandly  epic,  and  nei? 
ther  dramatic  intensity  nor  epic  serenity  ^vere  ever 
attained  by  veracity  alone.  They  are  attainable,  in 
pidlorial  as  in  literary  art,  only  by  style.  If  the  effedts 
are  great  the  art  must  be  great  in  proportion;  if  the 
effedts  are  vivid  the  style  must  be  keen  and  clear;  if 
they  are  noble  the  style  must  be  elevated.  Conscious^: 
ly  or  unconsciously,  Winslow  Homer  was  an  artist, 
and  it  becomes  a  matter  o£  interest  to  examine  the 
elements  of  his  pidtorial  style,  to  test  their  v^eakness 
or  strength,  to  determine,  if  possible,  by  \vhat  means 
his  results  are  attained.  Beginning  v^ith  the  least  im? 
portant  o£  these  elements  let  us  study  his  technical 
handling  of  his  material,  his  employment  of  the  me^ 
dium  of  oil  pointing;  then  his  treatment  of  Kght  and 
color;  then  his  draughtmanship,  his  knowledge  of  and 
feeling  for  significant  form;  finally,  reaching  the  most 
fundamental  of  artistic  qualities,  let  us  consider  his 
composition  and  the  nature  o£  the  basic  design  to 
w^hich  the  other  elements  o(  his  pidlures  are  added  or 
out  of  v^hich  they  grow. 

48 


\VKile  felicity  in  the  handling  of  material  is  the 
least  important  of  artistic  qualities  it  is  by  no  means 
v^ithout  importance.  Without  his  extraordinary  vir^ 
tuosity  Frans  Hals  would  be  a  nearly  negligible  paints 
er,  and  the  loss  of  his  exquisite  treatment  of  material 
would  considerably  diminish  the  rank  of  even  so  great 
a  master  as  Titian.  Or,  to  take  a  more  modern  in^ 
stance,  think  ho^v  much  of  Corot  \ve  should  lose  with 
the  loss  of  his  lovely  surfaces  and  his  admirably  flov/- 
ing  touch.  Homer's  technical  handling  of  oil  paint  is 
entirely  without  charm,  and  it  is  abundantly  evident 
that  he  triumphs  not  through  but  in  spite  of  it.  Mr. 
Beatty  has  said,  meaning  it  for  praise:  ''No  one,  I 
think,  w^as  ever  heard  to  talk  about  Homer's  manner 
of  painting,  or  about  his  technical  skill,  as  of  special 
importance.''  He  is  so  far  right  that  no  one  has  found 
Homer's  technic,  in  the  Kmited  sense  of  the  v/ord,  a 
reason  for  liking  or  admiring  his  paintings,  but  many 
have  found  it  a  reason  for  disliking  them;  and  to  some 
of  the  artist's  most  sincere  admirers  his  technical  lim? 
itations  remain  a  stumbling  block  in  the  way  of  their 
free  enjoyment  of  his  great  qualities.  In  his  early 
work  his  handling  is  hard,  dry  and  timid.  Later  it 
attains  to  force  and  directness,  and  sometimes  to  great 
skill,  but  never  to  beauty.  It  is  perhaps  at  its  best  in 
such  a  pidlure  as  The  West  W^ind,  w^here  the  sure- 
ness  of  touch  and  economy  of  means  are  striking  and, 
to  some  degree,  enjoyable.  The  picture  looks  as  if  it 
had  been  painted  in  a  few^  hours,  without  a  v/asted 
stroke  of  the  brush,  and  its  v^orkmanlike  directness 

49 


communicates  a  certain  exhilaration.  But  this  im^: 
pression  of  spontaneity,  which  is  the  highest  pleasure 
Homer's  handling  is  capable  of  giving,  vanishes  \vith 
further  labor,  and  there  is  nothing  to  take  its  place. 
His  surfaces  become  wooden  or  wooly,  his  handling 
grows  labored  and  harsh  and  unpleasing.  At  best  his 
method  is  a  serviceable  tool;  at  less  than  its  best  it  is  a 
hindrance  to  his  expression,  like  a  bad  handwriting, 
^vhich  one  must  become  accustomed  to  and  forget  be^: 
fore  one  can  enjoy  the  thing  v^ritten. 

If  Homer's  color  is  not,  like  his  workmanship,  a 
positive  injury  to  his  expression  it  seldom  reaches  the 
point  of  being  a  positive  aid  to  it,  at  least  in  those  great 
paintings  ^vhich  are  the  most  profound  expressions 
of  his  genius.  In  both  color  and  handKng  his  slighter 
sketches  in  watercolor  reach  a  standard  of  excellence 
he  v^as  unable  to  attain  in  the  more  difficult  medium. 
Many  of  his  marines  are  little  more  than  black  and 
white  in  essential  construction,  and  are  almost  as 
effedlive  in  a  good  photograph  as  in  the  original.  In 
The  V/est  Wind,  for  instance,  the  v/hole  of  the  land 
and  the  figure  that  stands  upon  it  are  of  a  nearly  uni^ 
form  brown,  while  the  sky  is  an  opaque  gray,  of  very 
little  quahty ,  brought  dov/n  to  the  edge  of  the  earth  in 
one  painting.  Across  this  the  v/hite  of  the  breakers 
is  struck  with  a  few  frank,  strong  touches.  The  con^^ 
trast  of  brown  and  gray,  of  transparent  and  opaque, 
is  pleasant;  but  the  whole  expression  of  the  pidlure  is 
in  its  shapes  and  its  values;  its  color,  as  color,  is  near:? 
ly  negligible.    This  is  an  extreme  case,  yet  in  most  o£ 

50 


THE  LOOKOUT — ALL  S  WELL 
THE  MUSEUM  OF  FINE  ARTS,  BOSTON,  MASS. 

Signed  and  dated;  Homer,  1896.     Canvas,  42  inches  high,  30  inches  wide. 


the  coast  scenes  the  color  is  really  of  little  more  im? 
portance,  though  the  perfedl  notation  of  degrees  of 
dark  and  light  often  gives  an  illusion  of  color  which  is 
not  actually  present.  In  some  of  the  figure  pictures 
color  is  carried  further.  In  The  Herring  Net  and 
Eight  Bells  the  grays  of  sky  and  v^ater  are  much  more 
subtly  modulated,  the  dull  yellows  of  the  sailors'  oil- 
skins  are  very  true  and  delicate,  and,  in  the  former 
picture,  the  rainbow^  gleams  of  the  fish  in  the  net  are  a 
fascinating  element  in  the  total  effedt.  Once  or  twice, 
v^here  the  lov^ered  key  of  moonlight  has  helped  him 
— in  All's  Well''  for  example — Homer  comes  near 
that  unification  of  all  the  separate  notes  of  a  pidlure 
by  one  prevailing  hue  v^hich  we  kno^v  as  tone,  and 
at  least  once,  in  The  Gulf  Stream,  he  reaches  to^va^ds 
a  fully  orchestrated  harmony,  the  blues,  especially, 
in  that  pidture,  being  superbly  rich  and  varied. 

But  to  understand  ho^v  far  Homer's  color,  even  in 
these  examples,  is  from  that  of  the  true  colorists,  we 
have  only  to  compare  his  v^ork  v^ith  that  of  such  con- 
temporaries and  compatriots  as  Inness  and  Martin. 
Inness's  harmonies  are  full,  vibrant,  rich,  including, 
on  occasion,  both  extremities  of  the  scale.  Martin 
plays  a  more  delicate  flute  music,  full  of  tender  mod- 
ulations and  tremulous  sweetness.  But  in  both  the 
color  is  the  very  texture  of  the  ^vork  v^hich  could  not 
exist  v/ithout  it.  V/ith  Homer  the  color,  at  its  best, 
is  an  agreeable  ornament  vs/hich  he  can  very  w^ell  dis= 
pense  v/ith. 

And  if  Homer  v^as  never  extraordinarily  sensitive 

51 


to  color,  there  is  some  evidence  that,  in  his  later  days, 
he  became  partially  color^bKnd.  This  evidence  first 
appears,  curiously  enough,  in  the  richest  piece  of  fiill 
color  he  produced  in  oils.  The  Gulf  Stream.  That  pic^ 
ture  Avas  a  long  time  in  his  studio,  and  he  may  well 
have  added  the  unexplained  and  unrelated  touch  of 
pure  scarlet  on  the  stern  of  the  boat  at  a  time  when 
his  sight  was  beginning  to  fail.  Certainly  the  scarlet 
is  so  vivid,  and  so  without  visible  reason  or  connect 
tion  with  other  things,  as  to  suggest  that  he  did  not 
see  it  as  we  do,  and  that  his  eye  was  growing  insensi^ 
tive  to  red.  In  his  latest  v^ork  this  scarlet  spot  recurs 
more  than  once,  and  is  the  more  startling  fi:om  its  ap^s 
pearance  in  connection  with  a  coldness  and  harshness 
of  general  tone  that  w^ould  of  itself  suggest  a  state  akin 
to  color  blindness. 

There  can,  on  the  other  hand,  be  no  doubt  v/hat? 
ever  of  the  strength  of  Homer's  native  gift  for  form 
and  for  expressive  Hne.  Almost  from  his  childhood 
he  made  dra^vings  which  have  the  incisive  truth,  in 
attitude  and  expression  of  the  sketches  of  a  Charles 
Keene,  and,  after  his  Tynemouth  studies,  his  figures, 
especially  of  women,  attain  a  grandeur  and  nobiUty 
of  type  which  makes  them  almost  worthy  to  be  com:; 
pared  with  the  majestic  figures  of  Millet.  In  no  other 
part  of  his  art  does  he  show  so  much  sense  of  beau? 
ty  as  in  some  of  these  grave  and  simple  figures  v/ith 
their  ample  forms,  their  sloyv  gesture,  their  quiet  and 
unforced  dignity  of  bearing.  At  its  highest  level  his 
drawing  of  the  male  figure  is,  if  less  beautiful,  almost 


equally  impressive;  and  his  grasp  of  attitude  is  almost 
infallible.  Whatever  his  people  are  doing  they  do 
rightly  and  naturally,  with  the  exadt  amount  of  effort 
necessary,  neither  more  nor  less,  and  with  an  entire 
absence  of  artificial  posing.  Infallible,  also  is  his  sense 
of  bulk  and  weight.  His  figures  are  alv/ays  three? 
dimensional,  and  alv^ays  firmly  planted  on  their  feet 
— they  occupy  a  definite  amount  of  space,  and  yield 
to,  or  resist,  a  definite  amount  of  gravitation  or  ofex^ 
ternal  force. 

These  are  among  the  greatest  gifts  of  the  figure 
draughtsman,  and  there  can  be  Httle  doubt  that 
Homer  had  the  natural  qualifications  for  a  draughts? 
man  of  the  first  order.  But  no  man,  whatever  his 
natural  gifts,  ever  mastered  the  structure  of  the  hu? 
man  figure  ^vithout  a  prolonged  investigation  of  that 
figure  disembarrassed  from  the  disguise  of  clothing. 
A  profound  and  intense  study  of  the  nude  is  indis? 
pensable  to  the  mastery  of  its  secrets,  and  for  such 
study  Homer  had  Httle  opportunity  and  less  inclina? 
tion.  He  received  no  training  from  others  and,  in  the 
confidence  of  his  strength,  failed  to  appreciate  the  ne? 
cessity  of  giving  it  to  himself;  and  his  figures,  though 
right  in  bulk  and  attitude,  are  often  almost  structure? 
less.  This  lack  of  structure  is  seldom  so  painfully  ap? 
parent  as  in  the  rounded  pudginess,  like  that  of  an 
inflated  bladder,  of  the  w^oman  in  The  Life  Line,  but 
even  in  his  best  figures  there  are  regretable  lapses  and 
passages  of  emptiness.  The  arms  of  the  three  girls  in 
A  Voice  from  the  CKffs  are  beautifully  and  naturally 

53 


arranged,  but  they  are  not  what  a  trained  draughts^: 
man  could  call  arms — there  are  no  bones  or  muscles 
under  the  skin— and  even  the  figures  in  Undertow, 
his  most  strenuous  and  most  successfiil  piece  of  figure 
dra^ving,  are  not  impeccable,  not  without  regions  of 
woodenness  or  puffiness. 

Perhaps  wisely,  he  never  again  made  such  an  effort 
— for  at  fifty,  if  ever,  it  is  time  to  use  the  acquirements 
one  has  rather  than  to  strive  for  new  ones — and  his 
figure  drawing  relapses,  in  his  later  work,  into  sum? 
mary  indications,  sufficient  for  his  purpose  but  slight? 
er  and  sUghter  in  structure. 

But  if  Homer  had  neither  the  right  kind  nor  the  right 
amount  of  training  for  the  figure  draughtsman,  he  had 
the  only  right  and  true  training  for  the  draughtsman 
of  rocks  and  v^aves,  and  no  one  has  ever  drav/n  them 
better.  Constant  observation  had  taught  him  all  that 
it  is  needful  to  knov/  of  their  forms,  and  had  fully  sup? 
plemented  his  natural  gifts.  No  one  has  so  felt  and 
expressed  the  soKd  resistance  o{  rock,  the  vast  bulk 
and  hammering  weight  of  water,  the  rush  and  move? 
ment  of  ^vave  and  vv^ind.  It  is  the  suggestion  of v;^eight 
and  movement  that  makes  his  figure  drav^ing  im? 
pressive  in  spite  of  its  lapses — it  is  in  the  suggestion  o£ 
weight  and  movement  that  his  dra^ving  of  land  and 
sea  is  unmatched  and  unsurpassable. 

A  sense  of  weight  and  of  movement  is,  hov^ever, 
much  more  a  matter  of  design— of  the  composition  of 
hne — than  of  drawing  in  the  usual  meaning  of  that 
word.    Indeed,  the  sense  o{  movement  can  be  con? 

54 


EARLY  MORNING  AFTER  STORM  AT  SEA 
COLLECTION  OF  MR.  ^V.  K.  BIXBY 


\ 


f 

^ 


veyed  by  nothing  else  but  composition.  The  most 
accurately  drawn  figure  of  man  or  horse  or  bird  ^vill 
refuse  to  move  unless  its  Unes,  and  the  lines  of  sur? 
rounding  objects,  are  so  arranged  as  to  compel  the 
eye  o£  the  spectator  to  follow  the  direction  of  the 
desired  movement.  It  is  by  composition,  therefore, 
that  Homer  obtains  his  effedts  of  movement,  and  it 
is  by  composition  that  he  obtains  all  his  great  effedts. 
From  the  very  first  he  shoves  some  of  the  qualities  of 
a  master  designer;  he  alvv^ays  places  his  subjedt  rights 
ly  within  the  redlangle  of  his  border,  he  always  bal^ 
ances  feHcitously  his  filled  and  empty  spaces;  and  as 
his  power  of  observation  becomes  more  and  more 
acute  his  power  of  design  keeps  pace  with  it,  his 
most  original  observations  being  infaUibly  embodied 
in  equally  original  designs. 

An  admirable  instance  of  the  expressiveness  of 
Homer's  composition,  at  a  comparatively  early  date, 
is  the  httle  ^vatercolor  of  Berry  Pickers  of  1873.  At 
first  sight  it  is  a  simple  transcript  from  nature,  w^ith 
httle  style  in  either  the  d^a^ving  or  the  color,  yet  it  is 
full  of  a  charm  difficult  to  account  for.  And  then  one 
notices  that  the  Unes  of  all  the  subordinate  figures  lead 
straight  to  the  head  of  the  taller  girl,  standing  alone  on 
the  left,  and  that  she  has  a  blowing  ribbon  on  her  hat. 
The  hne  of  that  ribbon  takes  possession  of  the  eye, 
which  is  carried  by  it,  and  by  the  clouds  in  the  sky, 
straight  across  the  picture  to  the  other  end  v/here,  so 
small  as  to  be  otherwise  unnoticeable,  a  singing  bird 
sits  upon  the  branch  of  a  bare  shrub.     By  that  sub:: 

55 


tie  bit  o£  arrangement  the  air  has  been  filled  not  only 
vv^ith  sun  and  breeze  but  v/ith  music,  and  the  ex? 
pression  of  the  summer  morning  is  complete.  That 
Homer  himself  may  have  been  una\vare  of  \vhat  he 
had  done  is  suggested  by  the  fadl  that  w^hen  he  repro? 
duced  this  composition,  reversed  by  the  engraver,  in 
''Harper's  Weekly''  he  utterly  spoiled  it  by  the  in:: 
trodudtion  of  another  figure,  at  what  has  become  the 
left,  which  disturbs  the  balance  and  attradts  the  eye 
avv^ay  from  the  bird.  Whether  the  change  Avas  made 
to  please  the  publishers,  or  for  some  other  reason,  the 
music  has  gone  and  the  pidlure  is  dead. 

NoAV  look  at  a  quite  late  pidture.  The  Search  Light 
of  1899.  •'■^  ^^  almost  totally  v/ithout  color,  and  has 
not  even  that  approach  to  unity  of  tone  which  moon:: 
light  sometimes  enabled  Homer  to  attain.  In  hand- 
ling it  is  poor  and  harsh,  and  there  are  no  objedts  in  it 
w^hich  require  more  of  the  draughtsman  than  a  fairly 
corredl  eye  for  the  sizes  and  shapes  of  things.  Yet  the 
pidlure  is  grandly  impressive.  Ho^v  is  this  impress 
siveness  secured?  It  can  be  by  nothing  but  composi? 
tion,  and  by  composition  at  its  simplest.  The  perfedl 
balancing  of  t^vo  or  three  masses,  the  perfedt  coordi:= 
nation  of  a  few  straight  lines  and  a  few  segments  of 
circles,  and  the  thing  is  done — a  great  pidture  is  creat- 
ed out  of  nothing  and  v/ith  almost  no  aid  from  any 
other  element  of  the  art  of  painting  than  this  all  im== 
portant  one  of  design. 

It  is  always  so  ^vith  Homer.  The  gravity,  the  sense 
of  serious  import,  the  feeling  that  the  adtion  in  hand  is 

5^ 


one  of  great  and  permanent  interest,  not  a  trivial  oc^ 
cupation  of  the  moment,  is  given  to  Eight  Bells  by  the 
masterly  use  of  a  fe^^  verticals  and  horizontals.  The 
rush  and  sv^oop  of  The  \Vest  Wind  is  a  matter  of  a 
few  sweeping  and  reduplicating  curves.  The  patterns 
of  The  Fox  Hunt  and  All's  Well  are  as  astonishingly 
fresh  and  unexpected  as  the  observations  they  contain 
and  control. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  test  of  a  designer  is  his  use  of 
little  things  to  produce  unexpectedly  great  effects,  and 
a  remarkable  instance  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  The  Gulf 
Stream.  Remove  the  trailing  ropes  from  the  bow  of 
the  tubby  boat  and  its  helpless  sliding  into  the  trough 
of  the  sea  will  be  checked,  the  ghastly  gliding  of  the 
sharks  v/ill  be  arrested,  and  the  fine  v^ave  drawing 
w^ill  not  avail  to  keep  the  pidture  aUve  and  moving. 

In  Homer's  mastery  of  design  v/e  have  a  quality 
"which  is,  if  not  precisely  decorative,  preeminently 
monumental;  a  quality  v/hich  explains  the  desire, 
once  expressed  to  me  by  La  Farge,  that  Homer  might 
be  given  a  commission  for  a  great  mural  painting;  a 
quahty  which  makes  one  regret  the  loss  of  the  mural 
decorations  he  actually  undertook  for  Harper  and 
Brothers.  In  this  mastery  of  design  v/e  have,  un- 
doubtedly,  that  w^hich  gives  Homer  his  authoritative 
and  magisterial  utterance;  that  ^vhich  constitutes  him 
a  creator,  that  which  transforms  him  from  an  acute 
observer  and  a  brilliant  reporter  into  a  great  and  orig^ 
inal  artist.  A  poor  technician,  an  unequal  colorist,  a 
powerful  but  untrained  draughtsman,  his  faults  might 

$7 


almost  overbear  his  merits  were  Ke  not  a  designer  of 
the  first  rank.  Because  he  is  a  designer  of  the  first 
rank  he  is  fairly  certain  to  be  permanently  reckoned 
a  master. 


PART  SIX 


IN  that  chapter  of  his  ''Your  United  States''  which 
deals  Avith  art  in  America  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  tells 
us  that  one  of  his  reasons  for  coming  to  this  country 
was  his  desire  o£  seeing  the  pidtures  o{  Winslow 
Homer,  that  when  he  saw  them  he  did  not  like  them, 
but  that,  coming  upon  an  exhibition  of  Homer's  Ava? 
tercolors,  he  was  forced  to  reconsider  his  judgment. 
He  found  ''these  summary  and  highly  distinguished 
sketches"  to  be  beautifiil,  thrilling  and  "clearly  the 
productions  of  a  master."  One  may  guess  that  Mr. 
Bennett  did  not  see  the  best  of  Homer's  pidlures  in  oil 
as,  assuredly,  he  did  not  see  much  else  in  American 
art  that  might,  or  should,  have  interested  him;  but  it 
is  quite  possible  that  further  study  would  have  lefi: 
him  of  the  same  opinion,  and  that  he  would  still  have 
considered  the  watercolors  superior  to  the  oils.  If  he 
did  so  he  Avould  only  be  in  line  ^vith  a  great  deal  of 
modern  opinion  ^vhich  prefers  the  immediacy  and 
vividness  of  the  sketch  to  the  ponderation  of  the 
considered  pidture,  and  which  rates  the  multitude  of 
Millet's  drawings  and  pastels  higher  than  The  Glean? 
ers  or  the  noble  \Voman  with  Buckets  in  the  Van? 
derbilt  coUedlion.  Indeed,  there  is  better  reason  for 
such  a  preference  in  the  case  of  Homer  than  in  that 

58 


of  Millet,  for  Millet  was,  v^hat  Homer  never  quite 
became,  a  master  o£  oil  painting,  and  could  give  a 
richness  of  color  and  a  beauty  of  material  to  his  pic? 
tures  which  Homer  was  quite  incapable  of  emulating. 

Homer's  earlier  v/atercolors  are  neat,  careful, 
rather  tinted  than  colored,  but  pleasanter  and  far 
more  skillful  than  the  oil  paintings  of  the  same  period. 
The  transparency  of  the  v/ashes  and  the  deft  decisive:: 
ness  of  touch  give  them  a  charm  and  sparkle  proper 
to  the  medium.  They  are  already  the  production  of  a 
more  competent  ^workman  than  their  author  ever  be? 
came  in  the  sister  art.  The  Tynemouth  series,  not  all 
of  v^hich  were  painted  in  Tynemouth,  for  some  of 
them  are  dated  several  years  after  the  painter's  re? 
turn  to  America,  differ  from  both  the  earlier  and  later 
work  in  being  complete  pictures,  carefully  composed 
and  elaborately  wrought.  As  such  one  thinks  of  them 
in  their  place  among  the  other  compositions  of  their 
creator,  not  v/ith  the  rapid  and  astonishing  notes  and 
sketches  of  his  later  years.  It  was  a  collection  of  these 
later  sketches  that  Bennett  sa^v  and  admired.  It  v/as 
by  a  coUedlion  of  such  sketches  that  Homer  chose  to 
be  represented  at  the  Pan? American  Exposition  of 
1901.  It  is  by  these  sketches  that  many  artists  and 
many  critics  of  today  v^ould  consider  Homer  most 
hkely  to  be  remembered. 

There  must  be  reasons,  more  or  less  valid,  for  a 
preference  so  vividly  felt — felt,  at  times,  by  Homer 
himself — for  these  watercolors  over  his  more  elabo? 
rate  ^vo^ks  in  oil,  and  one  of  these  reasons  I  have 

59 


already  touclicd  upon;  it  is  Homer's  extraordinary 
technical  mastery  of  the  medium.  If,  from  the  first, 
he  painted  better  in  ^watercolors  than  he  was  ever 
able  to  do  in  oils,  it  may  be  said  that,  in  the  end,  he 
painted  better  in  watercolors — with  more  virtuosity 
of  hand,  more  sense  of  the  right  use  of  the  material, 
more  decisive  mastery  of  its  proper  resources— than 
almost  any  modern  has  been  able  to  do  in  oils.  One 
must  go  back  to  Rubens  or  Hals  for  a  parallel,  in  oil 
painting,  to  Homer's  prodigious  skill  in  v/atercolor, 
and  perhaps  to  the  Venetians  for  anything  so  perfed:*: 
ly  right  in  its  technical  manner.  His  feHcity  and  ra? 
pidity  of  handling  is  a  deKght,  and  to  see  the  way,  for 
instance,  in  which  all  the  compHcated  forms  and  fore? 
shortenings  of  the  head  of  a  palm  tree  are  given  in  a 
few  instantaneous  touches,  each  touch  of  a  shape  one 
would  hardly  have  thought  of,  yet  each  indisputably 
right  in  character,  is  to  have  a  new  revelation  of  the 
magical  power  o£  sheer  workmanship.  Even  Sar^^ 
gent's  stupendous  cleverness  in  watercolor  is  not 
more  wonderful,  though  Sargent  seems  to  be  think^s 
ing  a  httle  of  the  brilliancy  o£  his  method,  whereas 
Homer  is  thinking,  single^mindedly,  of  the  objedl  or 
the  effedl  to  be  rendered,  and  is  clever  only  because 
he  is  sure  of  what  he  wants  to  do  and  seizes  instinct 
tively  on  the  nearest  way  of  doing  it. 

And  this  sv/iftness  and  certainty  of  hand  is  dehghts: 
ful  not  merely  for  its  own  sake  but  because  it  insures 
the  greatest  purity  and  beauty  of  the  material.  The 
highest  perfection  of  oil  painting  depends  upon  coms^ 

60 


plicated  processes  vv^hich  are  almost  impossible  to  the 
painter  from  nature,  impatient  to  set  down  his  obser? 
vations  while  they  are  immanent  to  his  mind;  and 
these  processes  our  modern  painters  have,  for  the 
most  part,  forgotten.  The  perfection  of  watercolor 
depends,  largely,  upon  diredlness  and  rapidity.  The 
material  is  never  so  beautiful  as  when  it  is  v/ashed 
in  at  once,  with  as  little  disturbance  by  rev/orking 
as  may  be,  the  v^hite  paper  everywhere  clear  and 
luminous  beneath  and  bet^veen  the  v^ashes.  It  is 
the  ideal  material  for  rapid  sketching  from  nature  be? 
cause  the  sketcher,  instead  of  sacrificing  technical 
beauty  to  diredlness  of  expression,  gains  greater  beau? 
ty  v/ith  every  increase  of  speed.  Therefore,  for  the 
fastidious  in  technical  matters.  Homer's  sudden  nota? 
tions  of  things  observed  have  an  extraordinary  charm 
which  comes  of  the  perfect  harmony  bet\veen  the  end 
sought  and  the  means  employed.  The  more  his  mind 
is  fixed  upon  the  rendering  of  his  impression  and  the 
less  he  thinks  o£  his  material  the  more  beautiful  his 
material  becomes.  The  accuracy  of  his  observation, 
the  rapidity  of  his  execution  and  the  perfection  of  his 
technic  increase  together,  and  reach  their  highest 
value  at  the  same  moment.  The  one  little  square  of 
paper  becomes  a  true  record  of  the  appearance  of  na? 
ture,  an  amazing  bit  of  sleight  of  hand,  and  a  piece  o£ 
perfedl  material  beauty;  it  gives  you  three  kinds  of 
pleasure,  intimately  related  and  united,  and  each  in 
the  highest  degree. 

Following    from    this   technical    superiority   and 

6i 


closely  connedled  with  it  is  the  second,  and  more  im? 
portant,  superiority  of  Homer's  watercolors;  they  are 
vastly  more  beautiful  in  color  than  are  the  best  of  his 
oil  paintings.  Oil  painting,  in  its  perfedlion,  is  capa^^ 
ble  o£  a  depth  and  splendor  o£  color  which  water:: 
color  painting  can  never  equal,  but  oil  painting  as  it 
is  generally  practised  today,  and  as  Homer  practised 
it,  is  relatively  poor  and  opaque  in  color,  muddy  and 
chalky  or  brown  and  heavy.  Almost  any  ^vatercolor 
painter,  if  he  will  refrain  from  emulating  the  soKdity 
of  oil  paint  and  eschew  the  use  of  Chinese  white,  can 
attain  a  purity  and  brilliancy  of  tone  vv^hich  is  very 
rare  in  modern  oil  painting.  A  master  of  the  material, 
hke  Homer,  capable  of  striking  in  a  hue  v/ith  its  full 
intensity  at  once,  \vith  just  the  gradations  and  modu^^ 
lations  he  ^shes  it  to  have,  can  make  every  particle 
of  his  color  sing,  and  can  reach  effedts  either  offeree 
or  tenderness  that  are  impossible  to  the  flounderers  in 
that  pasty  mass  v^hich  modern  oil  painting  too  readily 
becomes. 

Of  course  the  use  of  a  particular  method  does  not 
radically  alter  the  nature  of  the  man  who  employs  it, 
and  so,  although  Homer's  color  is  far  better  in  these 
w^atercolor  sketches  than  in  his  oils,  he  does  not,  even 
in  them,  become,  in  the  full  sense  of  the  ^vords,  a  true 
colorist.  He  is  never  one  of  those  artists  for  \vhom 
color  is  the  supreme  and  necessary  means  of  expres^^ 
sion.  His  art  does  not  live  in  color  and  by  color  as  the 
art  of  a  musician  exists  in  and  by  musical  sounds;  but, 
aided  by  the  beauty  and  transparency  of  the  material, 

62 


he  show^s  himself  in  his  watercolors,  as  he  seldom  does 
in  oils,  an  acute  and  daring  observer  and  recorder  of 
the  colors  of  nature.  He  is  not  expressing  deep  emos: 
tions  in  color,  ^v^iting  lyrics  or  composing  symphony 
ies;  he  is  only  telling  you  ^vhat  he  has  seen.  But  he  has 
seen  all  sorts  of  surprising  things,  sometimes  beauti^: 
ful,  sometimes  strange,  often  violent  and  almost  savs: 
age,  and  he  tells  of  them  v^ith  a  perfed:  impartiality 
and  in  a  language  of  the  utmost  perspicuity  and  vigor. 
The  intense  blue  of  a  tropic  sea,  the  red  and  black  of 
a  stormy  sunset,  the  spots  on  the  gleaming  sides  of  a 
leaping  trout,  the  deep  plumage  of  a  v/ild  duck — all 
these  things  are  set  dov/n  at  a  white  heat,  sv^iftly, 
sharply,  decisively,  before  the  impression  has  faded, 
and  they  are  set  do^vn,  therefore,  v/ith  the  greatest 
truth,  the  greatest  vividness,  the  greatest  intensity. 
It  is,  finally,  this  immediacy  of  impression,  this  in;: 
stantaneousness  of  vision,  even  more  than  the  beauty 
of  technic  or  the  purity  of  color  v^hich  are  its  accom^ 
paniments,  that  is  in  itself  the  great  charm  of  Homer*s 
watercolors.  And  the  diversity  and  multipKcity  of 
his  observations  are  as  remarkable  as  their  freshness 
and  their  truth.  Apparently  there  is  nothing  he  has 
not  seen  and  painted  at  one  time  or  another.  Figures, 
landscapes,  sea,  boats,  architecture,  still  Kfe,  the  shad^ 
ow  of  the  North  Woods  or  the  pitiless  southern  sun; 
about  all  these  things — about  anything,  from  a  dash? 
ing  catarad:  to  a  lemon  on  a  plate — he  can  teU  you 
something  nev/  and  unexpected.  He  is  one  of  the 
greatest  observers  that  ever  lived,  and  in  these  sketch:: 

^3 


es  you  may  ^vatch  him  at  his  v^ork,  catch  his  excite^ 
ment  at  the  discovery  o£  some  new  effedt  or  some 
hitherto  unnoticed  truth,  see  v^hat  he  sav^  and  feel 
what  he  felt,  with  the  least  possible  impediment  he? 
tween  his  mind  and  yours.  No  ^vender  Arnold  Ben? 
nett  found  such  sketches  thrilling.  You  are  reading 
the  note  hooks  of  a  sort  of  reporter  in  excelsis  of  na? 
ture's  doings,  and  you  are  delighted  w^ith  his  accur^: 
acy,  astonished  at  his  variety,  overwhelmed  by  his 
prodigal  abundance.  If  you  share  the  modern  love  for 
fadls  and  have  anything  of  the  modern  carelessness 
of  art  you  will  ask  for  nothing  more,  and  will  prefer 
such  notes  to  any  possible  v^ork  of  art  that  might  be 
constructed  from  them. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  you  are  one  who  feels  that 
a  complete  ^vork  of  art  is  something  different  from 
and  more  than  a  sketch,  you  may  still  enjoy  these 
sketches  intensely  w^hile  asking  for  your  fullest  satis? 
fadlion  something  more  definitely  designed  and  more 
deeply  considered.  With  all  their  brilliancy  these 
amazing  notes  are  only  notes,  and  Homer  ^vas  capa:^ 
ble  of  something  more  than  notes.  Hundreds  of  these 
sketches  were  set  down  for  their  own  sake  and  never 
referred  to  again.  Many  of  the  oil  pidtures  seem  to 
have  had  no  specific  preparation,  but  to  have  been  bes^ 
gun  diredtly  from  nature  or  from  a  memory  enriched 
by  the  constant  study  of  nature.  But  now  and  then 
one  can  identify  the  original  watercolor  sketch  and 
the  pidture  painted  from  it,  and  then  one  can  see  clear? 
ly  the  defedls  which  are  an  inevitable  accompaniment 

64 


of  the  merits  of  such  sketching.  You  cannot  have  at 
the  same  time,  and  in  the  same  work,  the  merits  of 
the  sketch  and  of  the  pid:ure;  and  if  the  picflure  is  in? 
ferior  in  spontaneity  to  the  sketch  it  is  as  manifestly 
superior  to  it  in  concentration  and  power.  In  the 
Memorial  Exhibition  of  Homer's  works,  held  at  the 
Metropolitan  Museum  in  191 1,  the  original  watercol? 
or  of  Hound  and  Hunter  and  the  final  painting  of  the 
same  subjecft  hung  together,  and  the  comparison  of 
them  was  instructive.  At  first  sight  the  w^atercolor 
w^as  the  more  taking.  It  is  exhilarating  in  the  firesh 
sparkle  of  its  handling,  and  the  color,  if  not  rich  or  in? 
tense,  is  clear  and  cool.  The  oil  pid:ure  seemed  heavy 
and  snufiy  by  contrast  and,  as  mere  painting,  rather 
uninteresting.  Yet  the  oil  pidlure  is  almost  inexplic? 
ably  impressive  and  remains  firmly  fixed  in  one's 
memory  \vhile  the  watercolor  has  faded  from  it.  The 
difference  is  in  countless  little  changes  which  have 
transformed  a  bit  of  reporting  into  a  masterly  design. 
Everything  has  been  so  adjusted  and  so  definitely  fit? 
ted  into  its  place  that  the  result  is  that  sense  of  per? 
manence  and  of  unalterableness  v/hich  is  perhaps  the 
greatest  feeling  a  v/ork  of  art  can  produce. 

It  is  this  relative  lack  of  design  which  makes  the 
watercolor  sketches  of  Homer,  perfed:  though  they 
are  as  sketches,  inferior  to  his  great  compositions  in 
oil.  They  are  marvelous,  they  are  admirable,  they 
are  distinguished,  but  they  are  sketches.  They  re? 
main  the  small  change  of  that  great  talent  which 
could  produce  Eight  Bells  or  The  Fox  Hunt.    In  their 

65 


sharpness  of  seeing,  their  vivacity  of  handling,  their 
luminous  and  intense  coloring,  they  give  a  different 
pleasure  from  that  v/hich  v^e  receive  from  the  master? 
pieces — a  pleasure,  at  times,  even  more  keen — but,  as 
I  think,  a  pleasure  of  a  somewhat  low^er  kind. 

It  is,  hov/ever,  a  matter  of  very  little  importance 
^vhethe^  we  like  better  Homer's  watercolors  or  his  oil 
paintings,  since  it  is  the  same  man  ^vho  produced  both. 
And,  indeed,  the  difference  bet^veen  his  performance 
in  the  two  mediums  is  a  difference  of  degree  rather 
than  of  kind — a  difference  of  relative  emphasis  only 
— the  yvhole  Homer  being,  after  all,  necessary  to  ac? 
count  for  anything  he  did.  The  consumate  designer 
of  the  great  compositions  based  his  design  upon  the 
same  acute  observation  that  delights  us  in  the  sketch^: 
es;  the  briUiant  sketcher,  though  he  does  not  carry 
design  to  its  ultimate  perfection,  is  yet  al^vays  a  born 
designer,  so  that  almost  any  one  of  his  sketches  has 
the  possibility  of  a  great  pidture  in  it,  and  his  sKghtest 
note  is  a  whole,  not  a  mere  fragment.  To  lose  any 
part  of  his  work  v/ere  to  lose  something  that  no  one 
else  can  give  us.  Add  to  the  broad  humanity,  the 
po^sver  of  narration  and  the  magnificent  design  of  his 
major  works  the  exhaustless  wealth  of  his  masterful 
and  succindt  jottings  of  natural  appearances,  and  you 
have  the  sum  of  \Vinslow  Homer — surely  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  personaHties  in  the  art  of  this  or  any 
country  in  the  latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


66 


THREE  HUNDRED  COPIES  OF  THIS 
BOOK  ON  DUTCH  HANDMADE 
PAPER  PRIVATELY  PRINTED  BY 
FREDERIC    FAIRCHILD   SHERMAN 


GETTY  RESEARCH  INSTITUTE 


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